Economic landscape completely ruined during Modi tenure : Congress

Stating that the economic landscape has been completely ruined,congress spokes person Supriya Shrinate in a post on ”X” said,”Note Ban, GST, Covid resulted in a loss of Rs11.3 lakh Cr to India's economy and extinguished 1.6Cr informal sector jobs. The reality also is that as far as joblessness is concerned, 2.7 lakh Central PSU jobs have been lost under Mr. Modi”.

In a post addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on X, party president Mallikarjun Kharge said, “By telling one lie after another on Jobs, you are rubbing salt in the wounds of the Youth!” He asked three questions citing the discrepancies in data between the Reserve Bank of India and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Congress spokes person Supriya Shrinate said that the number of people working on contract has gone up from, merely 19% in 2013 to 43% in 2022, the last available official figures. She questioned,If this is not the absolute disaster of our times, then what is? Joblessness has to be priority number one to be addressed in the budget. Is she going to do that? I have my doubts about it”,she said.

Coming down heavily on inequality,Shrinate said India is seeing rising levels of Inequality. She said.”Our economic inequality today is worse than what it was in the British Raj. 1% of India's population controls 40% of the country’s wealth”.

“Each time you talk about high prices, they will always talk about growth. They don’t even understand the real rate of growth. The reality is that food inflation in India has been consistently over the 9% mark, and the last reading is close to 10% with vegetable prices over a 27% growth”she said.

On consumption,Supriya said that nearly 60% of our GDP is nearly 2/3rd of our GDP. India is a consumption led economy and consumption has been totally muted,she said adding, FMCG has seen price cuts but sales have not taken off. “Rs60000 Cr worth of auto inventories lie unsold. And if this does not give you a sense of muted consumption, then what will?”,she questioned.

On high debt and low savings,she said,” We are forced to draw into the savings of our future, because of unemployment, because of low wages, because of high prices. Our income has not kept up, but our expenditure has gone up.India which is traditionally a savings country has seen savings plummet to a 50-year-low but has seen household debt as a percentage of GDP rise to nearly 41%”.

“The reality also is that we have never been as deeply taxed as much as we are today. The bottom 50% of the country pays 64% of the GST collected”,she said.

Stinging on the reality that 5 big refiners in India made a profit of $10.5 billion on account of cheap Russian fuel,ahe questions –“Did your petrol and diesel prices go down is the big question to which the answer is a big no”.

On agricultural sector,she said agriculture has seen a growth of 4% last fiscal year which is a steep drop from 4.7%. So is the government going to start spending on agriculture? Actually, far from it, the government has decided to cut the agricultural expenses.

In the last 3 budgets, she said agriculture expenditure as a percentage of total budget has gone down from 3.78% to 3.66% to 2.78%. In three years agriculture has seen a steep cut of one percent point. This is where most of our people work, this is where people who are jobless in cities are going and finding work.