FM responds to ex-PM on ‘blame game’
RECALLING WHEN AND WHAT WENT WRONG DURING A CERTAIN PERIOD IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, SAYS NIRMALA SITHARAMAM
WASHINGTON: Recalling when and what went wrong during a certain period is absolutely necessary, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said, targeting former prime minister Manmohan Singh for accusing the National Democratic Alliance government of always trying to put the blame on its rivals.
Conceding that there were some “weaknesses” in his regime, Singh had on Thursday said the Modi government should stop blaming the United Progressive Alliance for every economic crisis, as five years were sufficient time to come up with solutions. “I respect Dr Manmohan Singh for telling me not to do the blame game. But recalling when and what went wrong during a certain period is absolutely necessary to put it in context, now that I’m being charged that there’s no narrative at all about the economy,” Sitharaman told a group of Indian reporters on Thursday.
She was responding to a question on allegations by Singh that the government was always trying to put the blame on its opponents instead of finding solutions.
The senior Congress leader’s comments at the press conference in Mumbai came after Sitharaman at an event at the Columbia University in New York held the Manmohan SinghRaghuram Rajan combination responsible for subjecting public sector banks to their “worst phase”. “I have no reason to doubt that Rajan feels for every word of what he is saying. And I’m here today, giving him his due respect, but also placing the fact before you that Indian public sector banks did not have a worst phase than when the combination of Singh and Rajan, as prime minister and the RBI Governor, had. At that time, none of us knew about it,” she had said.
Sitharaman told the group of Indian reporters on Thursday that her remarks in New York were an answer to a question. The question was on parts taken out of the speech made by Rajan and it had three components to it.
The quote referred to what the former RBI governor had said about a centralised leadership and the absence of a coherent narrative of the economy, Sitharaman claimed. “I also understand there’s already in India lots of discussion about the finance minister being out of the country and how could she talk about issues that are essentially to be spoken within the country. “These taken on board, I would still say that was an answer given to a question which read a quotation from the speech of the former Reserve Bank governor,” she said.
“Then, if a political assessment has been made, nothing stops anyone from making it and it’s suddenly the right and prerogative of whoever wants to make it,” the Union finance minister said. She said she doesn’t feel she had crossed the line by giving a response, whether within or outside the country.
“If there is a charge against us that we have not given a cohesive narrative about the economy, I’m sorry, probably it has not even reached the narrative that we’re given about the economy or the target with which we are working or the response with which we are answering those stress in different parts of the country, those industries which are under stress, those messages have probably not even reached people who have commented on us,” she said.