Jaitley likens Manmohan to a CEO hired by shareholders

‘That was not a model applicable to the world’s largest democracy’

Ridiculing former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as “not a natural leader of the country or the party,” Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday compared him to a CEO “hired” by shareholders to run the company in which he will have to report to the board of directors.

“That was not a model which is applicable to the world’s largest democracy. The country needed an inspirational leader who could lead from the front,” Mr. Jaitley said while delivering a speech here on “Budget 2017 - an analysis”.

“I think that the first fundamental problem with the UPA government was that neither was the Prime Minister the natural leader of the ruling party or of the government, nor did he have the last word with respect to governance,” he remarked.

Accusing the UPA dispensation of policy paralysis and concentration of “arbitrary power” which resulted in scams and corruption, Mr. Jaitley said the UPA spent its entire time on “white-washing” and had no courage to make any important decisions.

He claimed that the Narendra Modi government had replaced such a system of arbitrary powers with decentralisation to prevent scope for any scams.

'Courageous decisions'

"We started off by cleansing the paralysed system which put us in a situation to take not only decisions, but courageous decisions with respect to the economy resulting in India becoming referred to as a bright spot when there is slowdown in the world."

Mr. Jaitley said the main intention of the budget and the government was to help make faster and bolder decisions, provide cleaner economy as well as freedom from black money and corruption besides creating a friendly environment for doing business so that the larger returns coming in the form of taxes could be spent on the poor of the country.

Describing cash, especially black money, as the facilitator of several crimes and social evils like bribery, he maintained that moving towards a “less-cash economy” was bound to reduce bribery and black money.