The Opposition and the government faced off in the Lok Sabha on Thursday on the issue of rising prices, with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi declare “a date when we can expect to see the price of dal (pulses) come down” and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley terming the attack “bluster” not borne out by statistics.
Mr. Gandhi made a direct attack on Mr. Modi on what he termed were false promises to control prices. “You give us a date by when the prices of dal will come down,” he said.
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Punning on the popular slogan during the Lok Sabha elections, ‘Har, Har Modi’ Mr. Gandhi said the situation was such that the slogan was now being turned to ‘Arhar (pigeon pea) Modi’.
The government fielded Mr. Jaitley to counter the attack and he was suitably scathing.
“This [inflation and price rise] is a topic of statistics and not sloganeering. The UPA had left the government in a serious state,” he said.
Fuel levies used for capital investment, says Jaitley
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday countered the opposition’s claim that the government was not passing on the benefits of low fuel prices to the consumer, and had, instead, hiked fuel prices at least nine times in the last two years.
“The benefits of low international fuel prices are being passed on to the consumer — one, by the low price of fuel, secondly by making sure that the losses sustained by oil marketing firms can be made up levies on fuel and thirdly, by using the levies of fuel for capital investment,” the Minister said in the Lok Sabha, responding to a scathing attack by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on the rising prices of pulses.
“Mr. Gandhi has spoken about how the UPA wrote off farmers loans of Rs 70,000 crores in 2009. That is a one time bonanza; our government is using the money to spend three times as much on rural roads, crop insurance and other means which will have a more long term effect on rural India’s well being,” he said.
“You are talking about a government which left behind double digit inflation and today we have a situation where steps have been taken in each sector to contain inflation. Any form of bluster is not a substitute for statistics. These are backed by hard facts,” the Minister said.
Mr. Jaitley mocked the Congress vice president, the great grandson, grandson and son of former prime ministers of India, over his reeling out the price of staples in the Parliament. “Any form of bluster is not substitute of statistics,” he said, and referred to how “everyone seems to be giving the impression that they go to the market everyday.”
Hopes of good monsoon
Insisting that the Modi government had reduced inflation and kept it under control, the Mr. Jaitley said he expected it to reduce further with a “good” monsoon.
Noting that India has the highest production along with highest consumption of pulses, he said while the demand is for 3 million tonnes, the production was 17 million tonnes, leaving a gap of six million tonnes. The output of pulses is expected to go up to 20 million tonnes this crop year, Mr Jaitley said, adding steps that were also being taken by the Ministry of Food to create a buffer of 20 lakh tonnes of pulses to keep the prices under control.
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