'Government obsessed with trying to fix blame on opponents': Manmohan Singh counters Nirmala Sitharaman's comment
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said that the current government was "obsessed with trying to fix blame on its opponents" instead of coming up with a solution that will revive the economy. Singh was responding to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's comment a day earlier blaming the Manmohan Singh-Raghuram Rajan duo for the bank crisis.
"I have just seen the statements by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman," said the former Prime Minister at a press conference, "I won't like to comment on that statement, but before one can fix the economy, one needs a correct diagnosis of its ailments and their causes. The government is obsessed with trying to fix blame on its opponent, thus it is unable to find a solution that will ensure the revival of the economy."
Singh was addressing the press in Mumbai ahead of the assembly elections in the state of Maharashtra on October 21. He mentioned the current crisis at the fraud-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank and said that the aggravating problem needed an effective solution but the BJP governments at the centre and in the state were unwilling to adopt policies that were people-friendly. Singh said, "It's very unfortunate what has happened in the case of this bank. I expect the government, the Maharashtra government and the RBI to put their heads together and provide a credible, pragmatic, and effective solution to this case where 16 lakh depositors are trying for justice."
Continuing his attack on the government's economic policy, Singh said, "The much advertised double engine model of governance on which BJP seeks votes has utterly failed. Maharashtra has faced some of the worst effects of the economic slowdown. The manufacturing growth rate of Maharashtra has been declining for the fourth consecutive year now."
The former Prime Minister also commented on the government's resolve to achieve a $5 trillion economy by the year 2024. He said, "I've said this publicly before, that to reach a goal of $5 trillion by 2024, as against the $2.7 trillion economy that we had in 2018, we would require a growth rate of 10-12% per annum. However, what is happening in the BJP regime is that the government is faced with the prospect of a declining rate of growth year after year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has come with a statement saying that India's growth rate during the current fiscal year will be only 6.1% as against the 7.3% that was mentioned some months ago. With growth rate declining every year, I don't think there is any hope of the economy reaching the target of $5 trillion by 2024."
He also vetted in his opinions regarding the Congress party's stand on the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). He said, "The Congress party voted in favour of the bill to abrogate Article 370, not against it. We believe that it is a temporary measure but if a change has to be brought, it should only be with the goodwill of the people of J&K. The manner in which it was implemented is what we opposed."
On the Maharashtra BJP's demand on the election manifesto for a Bharat Ratna to be awarded to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Singh said, "We are not opposed to Savarkar Ji but we are not in favour of the Hindutva ideology that he patronised and stood for."
A day earlier, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York mentioned that the combination of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and Raghuram Rajan as Governor of the RBI during their tenure had been responsible for the worst phase that Indian public sector banks ever faced. She further said that it was during this time that loans used to be given to leaders and influential individuals just on the basis of a phone call.
Sitharaman was, in turn, responding to an earlier comment by former RBI chief Raghuram Rajan who pointed out that India's crisis needed "internal cohesion and economic growth" and not "majoritarianism", in a dig at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the centre.
Manmohan Singh today responded to Sitharaman's allegations, admitting that when he was in office there were some "weaknesses", however, simply passing on the blame to UPA and claiming that the fault lies with them is not enough.
Reacting to the ex-PM's statements, Union Minister Piyush Goyal today said, "Dr Manmohan Singh should reflect on his own failures, where he went wrong, why he couldn't maintain a strong economy and give an honest government, why he was so helpless that he had to obey orders from 10 Janpath and had no capacity to make his own decisions."
Manmohan Singh, a doctorate in economics from Oxford, was the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. Earlier, too, he had repeatedly criticised the present government's economic policies, such as the highly-debated demonetisation decision and said that the exercise will roil the nation for a long time.