Economy was in worse state than known: Modi
‘PAID THE PRICE’ Says chose to accept political cost, not publish white paper NEW DELHI:
The Indian economy was in a much worse state than believed when the BJP led National Democratic Alliance government came to power, but the government had not decided not to bring out a tell-all white paper on the state of the economy to avoid further deepening the crisis even though it caused political damage to the government, prime minister Narendra Modi said in an interview to a magazine.
“The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious,” Modi said in an interview with Swarajya magazine as published on its website on Monday.
Modi came to power in 2014 highlighting the dismal management of the economy by the Congress led United Progressive Alliance government. Modi in the interview said it is ironical that the economy worsened under an ‘economist’ prime minister (Manmohan Singh) and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister (P Chidambaram). He reminded that India was in the Fragile Five economies in 2014 and experts believed that I in BRICS would collapse.
“Now, in the midst of this, imagine a White Paper coming out giving intricate details of the extent of damage. Instead of being a mollifier, it would be a multiplier of the distress,” Modi said.
Modi said his government tolerated a number of political allegations and accepted political damage but ensured no damage to our country. “We accepted this uncomfortable truth and hit the ground running from the very first day to stabilise things so that the Indian economy can be strengthened for the long haul,” he added.
On the controversy about job creation during the current government’s tenure, Modi said more than a lack of jobs, the issue is a lack of data on jobs.
“Our opponents will naturally exploit this opportunity to paint a picture of their choice and blame us. I don’t blame our opponents for blaming us on the issue of jobs, after all no one has an accurate data on jobs. Our traditional matrix of measuring jobs is simply not good enough to measure new jobs in the new economy of New India,” he added.
“As for Air India, the government has done what it had to with utmost sincerity. You have to differentiate between the lack of response to one sale offer and a policy decision,” Modi said in the interview.
This is the first time that the prime minister has commented on Air India after the disinvestment proposal failed to take off in May.
Responding to queries that the government does not seem too keen on privatisation, Modi also said that “at the Cabinet level, we have cleared the sale of not only Air India but several other (lossmaking) public sector units”.