Govt obsessed with fixing blame on opponents, thus unable to find solution for revival: Manmohan Singh

The Narendra Modi government has set a goal of crafting a $5-trillion economy by 2024. India is currently a $2.7-trillion economy. But Singh, while interacting with newspersons on Thursday, said, “I have said this before that to reach a goal of $5 trillion by 2024 as against $2.7 trillion that we had in 2018, we would require a growth rate of 10-12 per cent per annum. What is happening in the BJP regime is that the government is faced with prospect of a declining rate of growth year after year.”

India’s growth declined to a seven-year low of 5 per cent in the June quarter of 2019-20.

The former PM said that this government believed in “headline management”. “This won’t help you fix problems of the economy. The much advertised ‘double engine’ model of governance on which the BJP seeks votes has utterly failed,” he said.

Continuing his criticism on the way the economy is being managed, Singh said, “You need to take concrete steps to reverse the slowdown. You must ensure that imports do not eat into the domestic income recklessly. You need a credible government. You need strong leadership in Delhi.”

With Maharashtra voting in four days, the Congress had organised Singh’s lecture, Words of Wisdom on the Indian Economy, and a media interaction on the sidelines of the event in Mumbai.

On Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s comment blaming the UPA government under him for the public sector bank crisis, the former PM said, “I’ve just seen the statements by the Finance Minister. I won’t like to comment on that statement, but before one can fix the economy, one needs correct diagnosis of its ailments and its causes. This government is obsessed with trying to fix the blame on its opponents, thus it is unable to find a solution that will ensure the economy’s revival.”

“When I was in office what happened did happen. There were some weaknesses. But you can’t keep passing the buck on the UPA for everything. You have been in power for over five years. What have you done in these years? They should have learnt from our mistakes and provided credible solutions,” he said.

“Nirav Modi and other people ran away with public money, banks are going from bad to worse … you cannot claim year after year that the fault lies with the UPA. You may score some points, but you are not finding solution to the problem,” Singh said.

On the Centre’s move to cut corporate tax, Singh said measures that reduce the burden on businesses were welcome, but considering that the economy was suffering from demand shortage, a better route would have been to reduce indirect taxes.

Targetting the BJP government, he further said that Mumbai and Maharashtra had suffered some of the worst effects of the grave economic slowdown. “Maharashtra used to be number one in attracting investment. Today it is a leader in farmer suicides. Despite the promise of doubling farmer incomes, the rural areas in Maharashtra are witnessing nothing short of a crisis. The obsession with low inflation is inflicting misery of our famers. The Centre’s import-export policy are hurting farmers.”