P Chidambaram: ‘Economy being attended to by incompetent doctors’

Referring to former RBI governors Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel, former CEA Arvind Subramanian and former vice-chairman of Niti Aayog Arvind Panagariya, he said, “Every competent doctor that you identified and appointed has left the country.”

Arguing that the “obvious solution” to jump-start the economy now is to revive aggregate demand and incentivise investment, he said there was nothing in the Budget in that direction. Instead of putting money in the hands of people, he said, the government put money in hands of 200 corporates by giving them a tax rate cut. Chidambaram said the investment sentiment remains damp despite that because the government has criminalised most laws and has given extraordinary powers to the officers.

Pointing out that industry chamber CII has come up with a list of 37 laws which have to be decriminalised, he said, “Everything in this country is criminal. Now you talk about a charter of rights of taxpayers….we don’t want a charter, just take away these extraordinary powers given to these guys…that is good enough…Today there is no money in the hands of the people and there is no incentive for anyone to invest. On the contrary, there is fear and uncertainty pervading all over the country….”

Other leaders of the Opposition were equally scathing in their attacks on the government over economy, unemployment, reduced allocation for MGNREGA and the on the issue of the credibility of data.

T K Rangarajan of the CPM accused the government of “enhancing and boosting only the corporate sector” and said “all sections of the society will suffer, especially in rural areas from the low growth of investment in the past seventeen years”. Demanding an unemployment allowance, he said data shows that unemployment is at a 45-year high, and yet the government does not speak about it and has “Ram Temple and Kashmir” on its agenda.

T K S Elangovan of the DMK said the “budget is prepared on false premises” as “all data are falsified”. He said the “problem is that this government does not want to accept its failures” and added, “When you don’t give proper data to the people, you hide it, you are not hiding it from the Opposition parties, you are hiding it from 130 crore people,” he said.

Several leaders voiced concerns over the government’s plan to disinvest LIC and BPCL.

In Lok Sabha, NCP’s Supriya Sule said the Budget speech was “long and tiresome” and exposed the failure “of this government when it comes to fiscal health”.

She said that the government was talking about the bullet train but not a single acre of land has been acquired for it so far. “They are in fairy tale world… they live in make-believe world,” Sule said.

Expressing apprehension over the Budget numbers, Preneet Kaur of the Congress said presumption of 10 per cent nominal GDP growth and 12 per cent rise in tax collection seem “optimist and unrealistic given the low economic growth and falling exports”.