Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “divisive politics” had given India a 63-year low in bank credit growth and an eight-year low in job creation.
Taking a swipe at Arun Jaitley, Mr. Gandhi in a tweet alleged the Finance Minister's “genius”, combined with Modi's “Gross Divisive Politics (GDP)” had given a 13-year low in new investments. He claimed the fiscal deficit had increased and projects had been stalled.
The government estimates put GDP growth in financial year 2017-18 at a four year low of 6.5%.
Earlier on Friday, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram too had called out the government following the release of the first advance estimates of national income for 2017-18.
‘Worst fears realised’
“The worst fears of an imminent economic slowdown have come true,” Mr Chidambaram said. “Modi government’s tall claims of India growing at a ‘robust’ growth rate have evaporated in thin air. No amount of sugar coating, false bravado and rhetoric along with headlines management can conceal the stark reality.”
“Will government continue to claim that India's growth rate is robust,” the former minister asked. “A decline in economic activity and growth means loss of millions of jobs.”
“New project announcements have declined, fresh investment is low, informal sector is still reeling under the ill effects of demonetisation, job creation is abysmal, exports are plunging, , manufacturing sector growth has slowed down, agriculture sector has been hit hard and rural despair is abundant,” Mr Chidambaram said.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi dubs GST as ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’
Job losses
He also questioned how the government would create jobs while the economy is slowing.
“Job creation remains the single biggest failure of this BJP government,” he said. “In a slowdown, how will jobs be created? And how will the promised two crore jobs per year be created?”
The former Finance Minister also raised the issue of sluggish bank credit growth, saying that this doesn’t bode well for the economy.
In a press conference on Saturday, Congress MP Anand Sharma hit out at the government for recent job losses. “It is a matter of concern again that 33% jobs have been officially stated to be lost in the informal sector of the economy which employs 90% of India’s work force. That is over 3.72 crore jobs have been destroyed by this government whereas only few lakh jobs have been created,” Mr Sharma said.
