New Delhi The Narendra Modi government had launched a planned attack on India’s informal economy, and the nation-wide lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic was an example, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday in his latest video series.
The BJP’s attack on the informal sector was a conspiracy to turn people engaged in this sector into slaves, Mr. Gandhi alleged.
He said Prime Minister Modi wanted to take out the money in the informal sector and cited demonetisation and the flawed Goods and Services Tax (GST) as other examples of the assault on the informal sector.
“For the first time, the economy is facing a recession. But asatyagrahi [believers of untruth] are blaming it on God,” Mr. Gandhi said in a Hindi tweet, alluding to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s “Act of God” reference during a GST council meeting.
“The BJP government has been attacking the informal sector over the past 6 years. I am giving you three massive examples right now — Demonetisation, wrong GST and Lockdown. Don’t think the lockdown was unplanned. Don’t think it was done at the last minute. The aim of these three decisions was to destroy our informal sector,” Mr. Gandhi said in the video.
“The informal sector has a lot of money which the government can’t touch. They want to break this sector and extort this money from them. The effects of this attack on informal sector will be seen soon. The result will be that India won’t be able to produce jobs because the informal sector produces 90% of the jobs. Once the informal sector is destroyed, India won’t be able to produce jobs,” he added.
The Congress leader said that Mr. Modi needed media and marketing to run the government and “this media management and marketing is done by 15-20 people”.
“You are the ones who run this country, you take us forward and there is a conspiracy against you. You are being cheated and there is an attempt to turn you into slaves. We have to understand this attack and the entire country has to unite to fight against this,” the Congress leader noted.
Mr. Gandhi hailed former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for shielding the Indian economy during the 2008 global recession.
He said when he asked Dr Singh why India was not affected the 2008 economic storm, when it had affected the entire world including US, Japan, China, Dr Singh highlighted the strength of the informal sector.
“Manmohan Singh ji replied, Rahul if you want to understand India’s economy, you will have to understand that India has two economic structures. One is the formal economy and the other is the informal economy. You know the big companies which constitute the formal sector. The informal sector comprises of farmers, labourers, MSMEs. Till the time India’s informal sector is strong, no economic storm can touch India,” he said.
