The Congress on Friday attacked the Narendra Modi government for its handling of the COVID-19 and its impact on the economy. Its former president Rahul Gandhi claimed that even Pakistan and Afghanistan handled the pandemic better.
Sharing projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the Indian economy is set to contract by a massive 10.3 per cent this year, Mr. Gandhi mocked it as the Modi government’s ‘solid achievement’. He tagged a chart that showed IMF growth projections for 2020-21 for Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, China, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and India.
“Another solid achievement by the BJP government. Even Pakistan and Afghanistan handled Covid better than India”, Mr. Gandhi tweeted.
‘Economy declining’
At a press conference, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said that while India’s COVID-19 infection figure was now nearly 74 lakh, with 1.12 lakh COVID-19 related deaths, its economy was among the fastest declining ones.
“On the one hand, there is the corona pandemic where there has been gross mismanagement, and on the other, Mr. Modi and his team have ensured that the Indian economy has completely got ruined and is in complete shambles. Today, there is no demand, no consumption, no investment and hardly any jobs. In fact, some data suggests that 46 percent Indians are earning less than what they did before corona,” Ms. Shrinate said.
“It is a cause of deep concern because today Bangladesh has higher per capita GDP and the government, instead of doing something about it, turns around and says ‘our purchasing power parity is higher’,”she added.
On Wednesday too, based on the IMF projections that Bangladesh’s per capita would cross India’s, the Congress leader tweeted it as “solid achievement of six years of BJP’s hate-filled cultural nationalism”.
Earlier this week, the IMF projected that India’s GDP will contract by 10.3 per cent this year but is likely to bounce back with an impressive 8.8 per cent growth rate in 2021.
