Demonetisation proposal should’ve been thrown in the dustbin: Rahul Gandhi
SINGAPORE : Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that “If I was Prime Minister and someone had given me a file with demonetisation written on it, I would have thrown it in the dustbin. That is how I would have rolled it out,” Mr Gandhi said to a loud applause from the audience.
Demonetisation was “not a good” initiative and if he were the prime minister he would have thrown the proposal in the “dustbin”. Gandhi is on a five-day trip to the Southeast Asian countries. He began the Malaysia leg of his visit on Saturday and interacted with an “enthusiastic gathering” of Indian diaspora in Kuala Lumpur.
Asked how he would have rolled out demonetisation differently, Gandhi said “if I was the Prime Minister and somebody would have given me a file with demonetisation written on it, I would thrown it in the dustbin, out of the door and into the junkyard.”
“That is how I would have rolled it out, because that is what I think should have been done with the demonetisation which was not good at all,” he said in a video shared by the Congress party on its Twitter handle.
The Congress president has been a consistent critic of the notes ban decision and the way it was implemented, forcing millions of Indians to stand in snaking lines outside banks for days.
The demonetisation initiative was rolled out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 November 2016, announcing the invalidation of high-value currency notes currency notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000. Congress party has strongly criticised demonetisation, saying the move has led to economic slowdown.
Earlier at the University of California, Berkeley Gandhi had said that Modi had caused “tremendous damage” to India’s economy with his “reckless and dangerous” decisions like demonetisation and “hastily-applied” GST.
Responding to a question on women empowerment, Gandhi also said equality was not “good enough” for women empowerment and asserted that women have to be given more support than men to end the bias against them. “I don’t treat women equal to men, but better than men.
I think there is a bias in all societies, including in western society and that bias needs to be corrected. And to correct that bias, equality is not good enough, you have to be partial to women and give them more support than you give men,” he said.
Gandhi’s trip is part of the Congress party’s efforts to connect with the diaspora. He called on Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday and discussed a wide range of topics related to India-Singapore ties.
The trip is being organised by the AICC Overseas cell headed by technocrat Sam Pitroda, who helped former PM Rajiv Gandhi lead the IT revolution in India. (With Agency Inputs) pic : AFP
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