Government Confessed Economy Under Stress, PM’s Silence Deafening, Says Congress

The Congress on Friday said the government has “confessed” that the Indian economy is under stress and questioned the “silence” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari also demanded the government lists out the steps it intends to take to revive the economy.

He said NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson Rajiv Kumar deserves to be congratulated for “admitting” that the current stress in the financial sector is “unprecedented”.

This “confession”, he said requires a slight amendment as “it is not just the financial sector, (rather) it is the Indian economy that is under stress. The current situation in the Indian economy is unprecedented, something of the sort has not been seen in the past 70 years”.

“When you have the Indian economy enter its choppiest phase perhaps, the silence of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are deafening. All you see is deflection, politics of vendetta, undeclared emergency across the country,” he told reporters here.

NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Thursday the government was considering a number of measures which will be taken at an appropriate time to deal with financial stress and unleash animal spirit in the economy.

Tewari said on Friday over 3 crore people are currently facing a threat of becoming unemployed.

“Every sector of economy is under grave stress. The textile industry has been putting out advertisements on a daily basis for past one week, explaining that this is perhaps the worst period which the textile industry has seen in the past seven decades,” the Congress leader said.

“Much that the Bharatiya Janata Party-National Democratic Alliance government would like us to believe that this is because of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, unfortunately that is not the case. This is the making of the NDA-BJP government in the past five years,” he said.

He said there is a “shadow-banking crisis” because of insecurities, and private consumption which constitutes 60 percent of the gross domestic product is at historic low.

The crisis in the automobile sector is very well documented as 3.5 lakh people stand retrenched in the auto sector and Maruti Suzuki alone has cut its production by 25 percent for the sixth consecutive month in a row, he noted.

“The growth of the Indian economy has slowed down to 5.7 percent, the worst performance in the past 5 years and this is 5.7 percent with 2011-2012 as the base year,” he said.

Later in a tweet, Tewari said, “A structural problem bedevils the fundamentals of Indian economy because of lag effect of Demonitisation/goods and services tax coupled with spectre of terror unleashed on even honest businesspersons juxtaposed with lack of understanding of economic issues by successive Finance Ministers of NDA/BJP.”