New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Friday (February 9) discussed the centre’s white paper on the Indian economy, with opposition members criticising the move to bring a document detailing the ten years of the UPA government (2004-2014) as an “election manifesto” and a “political attempt” to defame the previous government.
The discussion which continued for about seven hours ended with the house defeating by a voice vote, the motions moved by opposition members RSP MP N.K. Premchandran and TMC MP Saugata Roy disapproving it.
Titled ‘White Paper on the Indian Economy’, the 59-page document that was presented in the Lower House on Thursday, hours after the Congress released a black paper on the Modi government’s failures, says that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government inherited an economy that was “in a fragile state; public finances were in bad shape; there was economic mismanagement and financial indiscipline; and there was widespread corruption.”
During her reply to the Lower House at the end of the discussion, union minister of finance Nirmala Sitharaman responding to arguments by opposition MPs who called the document “baseless” said that the paper was a “serious document” based on “evidence”.
Quoting prime minister Modi in 2016, Sitharaman said that it was decided not to bring the white paper on the condition of the economy in “national interest.”
“There is a lot of suggestions coming up that I should lay a White Paper on the condition of the economy. But I am not doing it because of national interest,” she quoted Modi saying.
“Because if the state of the economy would have come out then, not a single investor would have come and our own citizens would have asked what was going on,” she said.
Sitharaman said that during the UPA years, “big ticket corruption was one a year, so our own citizens would have lost confidence in the economy because of the white paper.”
“We had 10 years which can be periodically compared to UPA’s 10 years. Responsibly, we took the challenge of getting everything sorted out. Now, having placed the economy in a better position, we have come up with the white paper,” she said.
Challenging the opposition, Sitharaman said that the document is based on evidence.
“I challenge anyone who says this document is baseless. Everything is with evidence. I challenge anyone who says that we have kept the White Paper which has no proof,” she said.
‘Concoction of lies’
The opposition MPs during their speeches questioned the timing of the white paper.
Premachandran, who had also moved a motion disapproving it, said during his speech that the white paper was a “political attempt to ignore the valuable efforts of the previous UPA government and the contributions of renowned economists and scientists and experts from 2004 to 2014.”
He also said that in the last decade the country has seen growth of unemployment, inflation, price rise and increase in poverty and “shifting the blame on to the previous government for failures of this government is not proper.”
TMC’s Roy who had moved the second motion disapproving the white paper said that the the finance minister should have first apoligised to the nation for demonetisation.
“There has not been a bigger scam in the history of this country,” he said pointing to the cash in circulation returning to the economy after the circulation.
Ray also demanded to know what action has been taken to extradite fugitive economic offenders like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya.
India is the poorest among BRICS nations. Why can’t India grow as per its potential? Why are we behind China?”
Pointing to little growth in jobs and manufacturing, Roy said only “a few well connected families have accounted for significant growth.”
“Government has no answers on unemployment, demonetisation,” he said.
Congress’ leader of the house Adhir Ranjan Choudhury said that the timing of the white paper shows that it is an “election manifesto” to tarnish the image of the UPA.
“The intent and purpose of bringing this kind of White Paper simply is not convincing. It is nothing but a sheer concoction, rather a granary of concoctions and mountain of lies,” he said.
“At the fag end of the session, this kind of white paper only with the objective to tarnish the ten years of UPA government, does not cut ice. It is nothing but an electoral manifesto with the objective of scoring electoral brownie points that has prompted you to bring this kind of white paper.”
AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi demanded to know from the finance minister who was responsible for the declining GDP growth.
“GDP growth during UPA was 6.8% on average, during Modi’s government it is 5.9% on average, tell us is China responsible or Pakistan?
Accusing the government of “hiding data” Owaisi asked why Unemployment Survey done since 2011 and the PLF survey (National Survey Organization’s Periodic Labour Force Survey) and consumption survey that happened in 2018 and 2017 respectively have not been done since.
NCP MP Supriya Sule said that while a white paper usually covers an issue in-depth, and ways to resolve a problem, the white paper brought by the government only included “allegations” against the previous government.
“It is not a white paper, it is a politically coloured paper,” she said.
DMK MP DNV Senthilkumar S called the white paper a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“This white paper is nothing but a concoction of twisted facts and selective memory conveniently ignoring the failures of the present administration. The honourable prime minister seems to have a penchant for blaming the Congress and Nehru for everything. They have been in power for the last ten years and they are supposed to talk about their merits and their success but they still want to talk about Congress and Nehru,” he said.
Inflation, jobs and leadership
Sitharaman in her reply said that under the UPA average annual inflation was 8.2%, and that in the last three years, it has averaged 9.8%.
“Under the UPA, retail inflation was more than 9% for 22 months, our retail inflation was mostly at 5%, never crossed 8%,” she said.
Sitharaman claimed that in the Modi years, unemployment has recorded a decrease from 5.8% in 2018-19, to 3.2% in 2022-23.
However, according to a report by Bloomberg that cited Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data India’s unemployment rate rose to a two-year high of 10.09% in October last year.
She added that over 8 lakh central government vacancies had been filled with “complete transparency” while the gig economy had created 77 lakh jobs.
Last month, Santosh Mehrotra wrote in The Wire that open unemployment was barely 2.1% in 2012 (the last year for which data was available before the BJP came to power) and had already nearly tripled to 6.1% in 2018 (National Survey Organization’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), conducted annually since 2017-18), the highest rate in 45 years of India’s labour force surveys.
Sitharaman also accused the opposition Congress of wanting credit for schemes like MGNREGA, DBT and Aadhaar but claimed that the “UIDAI’s parent body in UPA, the Planning Commission, was rejecting its proposal of Rs 15,000 crore.”
“At least three ministries at that time had serious reservations with real-time bio-metric authentication but Congress still says that ‘Aadhaar is ours.’ It was said that UIDAI was ‘conceptualised with no clarity of purpose’.
She said that it was due to Aadhaar & DBT that the Modi government was able to send money directly into beneficiaries’ accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This was the leadership and vision which the UPA completely lacked,” she said.
Prior to embracing Aadhaar, in the run-up to the 2014 elections, however, the BJP leadership including Modi had rallied against Aadhaar and criticised the biometric identity card as a waste of taxpayers money.