Modi government has attacked the informal economy Says Rahul Gandhi
NEW DELHI : Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government and said the central government has attacked the country’s unorganised economy in the last six years attempting to turn people into slaves.
He accused the government of attacking the informal sector with its three moves- demonetisation, lockdown and GST. “India’s economy is witnessing a slowdown for the first time in 40 years, this will be confirmed today.
Those who can’t practice Satyagrah (dedication to truth) are blaming God.”,” the ex-Congress chief tweeted, referring to the GDP data that will be released today and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s “act of God” remark last week.
He put forth three examples to substantiate his contentions — demonetisation, flawed GST, and the Covid-induced lockdown and added that the aim of these three decisions was to “finish the informal sector”.
“The BJP government has attacked the unorganized economy in the last six years and the attempt is being made to make you a slave,” Gandhi said in a new video series called ‘Arthvyavastha Ki Baat’.
In the 3 minute and 38 seconds video, the unemployment rate that has been the highest in 45-years was flashed as Gandhi spoke. “Over 40 crore labourer in the informal sector are caught in extreme poverty. In the last four months, nearly two crore people have lost their jobs,” it showed.
His remarks came amid fears that the Indian economy will see its first-ever quarterly economic contraction since such data began to be published in the mid-1990s. “There is an attempt to turn you into a slave,” said the former Congress chief in a video on the present state of economy. The video is a part of Rahul’s fresh series on economy. He had earlier come out with a five-part series on Chinese incursions in Ladakh.
The 50-year-old Congress leader suggested that the former Congress-led UPA government had shielded India from the “economic storm” in 2008, adding that the government is “trying to turn you into slaves”.
Mr Gandhi sums up the video saying: “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, along with other opposition parties, are going to raise the issue of a slowdown of economy, its handling of the covid-19 pandemic, including the lockdown, and the recent controversy over the payment of GST compensation.
Do not 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,” Wayanad MP said in the nearly four-minute-long video released on his official social media channels on Monday.
The informal sector was worth a fortune and so the Union government wants to “break” the sector and “extort” money out of it, Gandhi said. There was a conspiracy being hatched against workers of the informal sector as they were being cheated, he claimed.
“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. As the informal sector produces 90% of the jobs, once it is destroyed, India won’t be able to produce jobs,” he said.
India imposed a nearly three-month-long lockdown with the unorganized and informal sector taking a big hit as thousands of migrant workers went home on foot, particularly from metro cities.
The narrative of the Congress on the lockdown has been that it was hastily implemented without much planning by the Union government led by Modi, which has hurt the poor the most. Eyeing economic revival, the Union government earlier this year had announced an economic package with a series of schemes to benefit poor and migrant workers.
His attack on the government came after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Tuesday that demand in the economy will take quite some time to mend and that an assessment of aggregate demand during the year so far suggests that the shock to consumption is severe.“RBI has now confirmed what I have been warning for months. Govt needs to: spend more, not lend more,” Gandhi said.
