NOTE BAN: BJP CONCEDES A ‘BRIEF SLOWDOWN’
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday admitted to a “brief slowdown” in the economy as a result of demonetisation, implementation of the goods and services tax, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, which it termed “creative destruction”. The BJP National Executive passed a political resolution at its National Executive meeting, which detailed PM Modi’s vision of building a New India by 2022.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday conceded to a “brief slowdown” in the Indian economy as a result of demonetisation, implementation of goods and services tax (GST) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, which it termed as "creative destruction".
The BJP national executive passed a political resolution at its two-day national executive meeting that concluded on Sunday, which detailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of building a ‘New India’ by 2022, when the country marks 75 years of its Independence.
It said a “new confident India” which is “reaching new heights in each and every field” was in the works, and a “spirit of inventions and innovations is sweeping across the country” and helping farmers double their incomes.
Borrowing from Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of "creative destruction", the political resolution credited the achievements of the four years of the Modi government to the "visionary and disruptive leadership" of the PM.
It said the PM “inherited a crumbling, corrupt and crony capitalist economy” four years ago. “We had the challenge to turn it around. The Prime Minister undertook the task of setting its basics right. It called for some harsh action, the kind that the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’,” the resolution stated.
Quoting from Schumpeter, the political resolution said the economist described ‘creative destruction’ as the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”.
“Demonetisation, GST, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code - IBC, etc are such measures that set India’s economic basics right while bringing economic discipline and rule of law in the governance," the resolution stated.
"As a result, after a brief slowdown, the Indian economy is rising fast," it stated. It said India is "the fastest growing major economy in the world today with 7.5 per cent GDP growth rate as projected by the IMF (International Monetary Fund)". The resolution stated that China with 6.6 per cent growth rate is "well behind" India.
The resolution said India’s contribution to the world’s GDP has increased from 2.6 per cent in 2014 to 3.3 per cent in 2017. While not referring directly to rupee’s value, the political resolution said Moody’s rating agency upgraded India’s local and foreign currency issuer rating to Baa2 with a stable outlook from Baa3.
The political resolution stated that "corruption", which was "once endemic to Indian system has largely disappeared from public domain. In a reference to Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and other economic fugitives, the resolution said,
It said there was a time when India was called a poor country, when both its government and people were poor. It said that while slowly the people started becoming rich, but the government remained poor. The resolution stated that after four years of prudent fiscal management have made both India and Indians richer.