Do away with vendetta politics, fix economy: Dr Manmohan Singh tells Modi

Terms note ban, GST as a man-made crisis that dampens inheritant business potential of India; NDA govt’s mismanagement prime reason for the slowdown.

New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has come down heavily on the NDA government holding mismanagement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the economy slowdown. India has not yet recovered from the man-made blunders of demonetisation and a hastily implemented GST, criticised Dr Singh while advising Mr Modi to put aside vendetta politics and reach out to all sections of the society.

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According to the former Prime Minister, the domestic demand is depressed and the consumption growth is at 18-month low, while nominal GDP growth is a 15-year low. Tax revenues are under pressure as tax terrorism and note ban continues to impact the business.

Finding fault with the recent record money transfer of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore from RBI to the Centre, Dr Singh said the Central government doesn’t have a plan on how to utilise this.

“I urge the government to put aside vendetta politics and reach out to all sane voices and thinking minds to steer our economy out of this man-made crisis. The last quarter GDP growth rate of five per cent signals prolonged slowdown. India has the potential to grow at a much faster rate, but mismanagement by the Modi government has resulted in this slowdown. As a result, over 3.5 lakh jobs were lost in the automobile sector alone,” Dr Singh said.

Coming to the agriculture sector, Dr Singh said that the farmers were not getting minimum support price (MSP) and the rural income was under pressure. India failed to exploit export opportunities in the global trade due to geopolitical realignments, he said.

Indian GDP growth fell for the fifth quarter in a row as the economic expansion came in at the slowest pace since the March 2013 quarter, when it had stood at 4.3 per cent. A slowdown in the sale of cars to biscuits and lakhs of estimated job cuts across sectors plagued the economic growth of the country.