BJP MP Subramanian Swamy had alerted Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the storm clouds gathering over the economy over two months before the official data revealed that the country’s growth rate had slipped to 5.7% in the first quarter of this year.
In a missive sent on May 9 this year, Dr. Swamy had urged Mr. Modi to set up a crisis management team in the PM’s Office (PMO) to assess the state of the economy and take steps to turn it around in time for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
BJP veteran and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had also recently raised concerns about the economy heading for a hard landing, triggering a strong reaction from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who referred to him as ‘a job applicant at 80’, making an ‘attempt to change the narrative’ about India.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had warned about India’s GDP growth rate dipping by about two percentage points owing to the Centre’s decision to scrap high-value currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1,000 last November, had noted last month that the economy was on ‘a downhill path’ due to demonetisation as projected by him and glitches arising out of the implementation of the GST that need to be resolved.
Negative factors
“I write this to bring to your attention storm signals from the Indian economy which need addressing…Today, the perception about the Indian economy is that the negative factors could soon spin out of control,” Dr. Swamy noted, citing the denial of an upgrade in the country’s sovereign credit rating by rating agencies.
