DMK president M.K. Stalin on Wednesday criticised the COVID-19 economic stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the action plan of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. He charged that the package had failed to address in a humanitarian manner the plight of the poor, migrant workers, employees of medium and small industries, farmers and the middle class who had lost their livelihood in the last three months.
“Both the stimulus package and the action plan have come as a great disappointment. There is actually no connect between the two,” he said in a statement.
According to him, there was no plan to credit money into the bank accounts of those who were not able to return home and were struggling for food and medicine. It had only added dissatisfaction to the existing situation, he said.
Mr. Stalin said that State governments were facing an unprecedented financial crisis and each State had sought ₹1 lakh crore as relief. “But there is no allocation to strengthen the State finances. The Centre is not ready to pay attention to the idea of federalism even now,” he charged.
The DMK leader said that while there were 6.3 crore small and medium industries, the government had announced the package only for 45 lakh units.
“This is a time of disaster and there is a need to rescue the economy from the crisis. The Centre has no plan to rehabilitate the economy, develop industry or create livelihood when the country will come out of the pandemic. It seems to have only empty slogans,” he alleged.
He said that the announcement of the Finance Minister to rehabilitate the economy looked like the electoral promise of the BJP that it would recover black money from foreign banks and deposit ₹15 lakh in every Indian’s account.
“At a time when unemployment and job loss had ravaged every family, the government should distribute ₹5,000 each to the families,” he urged.
