Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday criticised his successor Narendra Modi of failing to keep the promises he had made during election campaigns. “He said we will provide two crore jobs, we have not seen even two lakh jobs,” Singh said in his address at the 84th Congress plenary session.
Singh accused the Modi-led government of messing up the economy through its ill-considered demonetisation policy and the Goods and Services Tax legislation, which he said was “hastily put forward”. These policies destroyed jobs and created problems for small and medium-sized industries, and the informal sector, the veteran Congress leader added.
Singh said the prime minister’s promise to double the income of farmers within six years was not feasible. “If you want to do that, you need a growth rate of 12% per annum, which is not possible,” he pointed out. “This is only jumla [empty promises] and tall claims made by PM Modi.”
The former prime minister also took on the Centre for the increase in incidents of cross-border violence, accusing it of mismanaging the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. “The atmosphere is deteriorating day in and day out. It is obvious from the fact that our borders are insecure, be it cross border terror or internal.”
The Congress had helped create an atmosphere conducive for talks, he added. “We have problems today but they need to be resolved peacefully,” Singh said. “Hostile behaviour will not help. We must remember that Pakistan is our neigbhour.”
He, however, added that Pakistan’s support for anti-India terrorist groups was not acceptable. “We must warn Pakistan that this is problematic to the peace in sub-continent.”
BJP has made people poor, claims Chidambaram
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram also questioned the government’s track record on the economy, saying “the Indian economy is decoupled from the world economy” even though the Bharatiya Janata Party government had inherited a strong economy.
“Demonetisation was a big lie,” Chidambaram said. “RBI [Reserve Bank of India] is still counting and won’t tell us how much money has come back. I would like to advice the RBI Governor to go to Tirupati and get the hundi [donation box kept at temples] collectors. They count money faster than the RBI.”
The former Union minister pointed out that the Manmohan Singh government’s biggest achievement was bringing 14 crore people out of poverty. But, the BJP government’s policies pushed people into poverty, he claimed. “The number of people below poverty line went up, it is the greatest disservice the BJP government did to the people of India.”
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