Survey irrelevant, says Congress
Says it’s disconnected with reality, not bothered about common man’s problems
New Delhi, Jan. 31: The Congress on Friday hit out at the government on the Economic Survey, saying it is “completely disconnected” with the reality as the country is facing difficult times on the economic front and it is not bothered about the problems faced by the common man.
Former finance minister and senior party leader P. Chidambaram questioned the silence of the government on the country's GDP growth rates being revised downwards for 2017-18 and 2018-19.
“The state of the economy under MODI-1 was actually worse than what we believed so far,” he said. The government on Friday revised downwards the economic growth rate for 2018-19 to 6.1 per cent from 6.8 per cent estimated earlier.
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala mocked the concept of “thalinomics” given by finance ministry's chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, saying the government had “messed up again”. “Modinomics + Degree in Entire Political Science = Thalinomics. Reality Check = khalinomics. Because ‘thalinomics’ results in Inflation 7.3 pc, food inflation 14 pc, gas cylinder `714, cooking oil `135/Kg, pulses `96-110/Kg and petrol `73.27/litre. Messed upagain (sic),” Mr Surjewala said in a tweet.
Congress spokesperson Rajeev Gowda accused the government of “fudging data” and committing a “fraud” saying the numbers presented by it were not believable by the world. “Thanks to monumental mismanagement by the Modi government, the Indian economy is going through very difficult times. Yet the Economic Survey released today is completely disconnected from this grim reality. But this is not surprising as all of the Modi government's chief economic advisers have ignored the ground realities in all these years,” he said.
Taking a swipe at “Thalinomics” concept, he said, “‘Thali’ will soon be ‘Khali’”.