Chidambaram snubs BJP’s White Paper calling it a hatchet job, white-lie paper

“The Indian economy recorded the ‘golden period of growth’ in the three years between 2005-06 and 2007-08 when the GDP grew at 9 per cent or more at an average of 9.5 per cent. The Indian economy achieved its best fiscal performance in 2007-08 when the fiscal deficit was 2.5 per cent and the revenue deficit was 1.1 per cent,” he said.

Chidambaram also put out some figures comparing the performance of the UPA and NDA tenures. He said while the GDP growth during the UPA period was 7.46 per cent according to the old series and 6.7 per cent under the new series, the growth rate under NDA is 5.9 per cent. He said the fiscal deficit in 2013-14 was 4.5 per cent against 5.8 per cent in 2023-24. Similarly, the national debt was Rs 58.6 lakh crore in 2013-14 which went up to Rs 173.3 lakh crore in 2023-24.

While the debt to GDP ratio, which was 52 per cent during the UPA government, has gone up to 58 per cent, household savings as a percentage of GDP dipped to 19 per cent during the UPA tenure from 23 per cent now, he said. Similarly, farm wages growth dipped to 1.3 per cent from 4.1 per cent and gross Non-Performing Assets of public sector banks soared to Rs 55.5 lakh crores from Rs 8 lakh crore. He argued that the NDA government has written off Rs 14.56 lakh crore bank loans, as against Rs 2.2 lakh crore by the UPA government.

Chidambaram said the government’s spending on sectors such as health and education, too, have come down while the prices of petrol, diesel, and cooking gas shot up.

“The White Paper put out by the government is a hatchet job. It is a white-lie paper. Even the authors will not claim that it is an academic, well-researched or scholarly paper. It is a political exercise intended to damn the previous government and hide the present government’s broken promises, monumental failures, and betrayal of the poor,” Chidambaram said.

He said a fair and unbiased assessment of any period will not start arbitrarily with 2004 and end abruptly in 2014. “It would have assessed a reasonable period before 2004 and included a reasonable period after 2014. The paper released today is not a White Paper; it is a paper that is intended to whitewash the many sins and commissions of the NDA government in the last 10 years,” he said.

Questioning the record of the BJP government, he said the party had come to power making “wild promises” such as creation of two crore jobs a year, bringing back black money stashed abroad in 100 days, doubling of farmers’ incomes, lowering the prices of petrol, diesel to Rs 35 a litre, providing house to every family and building of 100 smart cities by 2022 but “broken them without an expression of regret”.

“In 2004, the UPA government had inherited an economy that had performed at a below-average rate in the previous six years. Yet, the (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee government called the moment ‘India Shining’. The slogan recoiled on the government. The BJP government suffered an ignominious defeat. The authors of the white-lie paper may realise that history has a way of repeating itself,” he said.