Chennai: Senior Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday lashed out at the Narendra Modi government, terming it ‘incompetent’ in terms of economic management.
Slamming the government’s economic measures like demonetisation and Goods and Service Tax in its four years and two months of administration, he said “we are now worried what will happen in the next eight months.” The Lok Sabha elections are due next year.
Reeling out statistics at a seminar titled ‘Challenges Facing India’ here, also attended by Left leaders Sitaram Yechury and D Raja, Chidambaram alleged there had been a dip in the country’s economic growth rate over the years due to lesser investment and lower lending by banks.
While countries bigger in terms of GDP size like the U.S. and China were doing well, India suffered from slow growth and issues like unemployment, spurred by steps like demonetisation, he said.
The note ban, for instance, had severely impacted the Micro Small Medium Enterprises sector, he said and referred to recent reports that about 50,000 such units had closed down in Tamil Nadu post the ban on then high value notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. This was also the case in many other Indian cities, he added.
Further, the Indian Rupee was becoming weaker against the U.S. Dollar, he said, adding that if this continued, it would lead to increase in import costs, price rise and hike in interest rate, among others.
The Non Performing Assets (NPAs) stood at about Rs 10 lakh crore, Chidambaram said, even while insisting that banks were now hesitant to lend.
“In terms of economic management, this (BJP-led NDA) is an incompetent government,” he charged.
If the present economic condition continues, “the government will lose its self-confidence and start going haywire,” the former Finance Minister added. The solution for the country’s economic problems lay in the hands of the people and they should vote out the BJP government in next year’s elections, he said.
“All that is required is the next government should not go haywire” on the economy, he said.
The earlier Congress-led UPA government had ushered good growth, even touching the eight per cent mark, he said. “Mistakes did happen (during UPA) but it did good things to people as regards economic management,” he said. CPI (M) general secretary Yechury said the concept of Indian nationhood was now being “challenged.”
