PTI, SURAT: In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his predecessor Manmohan Singh today said Modi failed to understand the “pains” of his note ban and GST decisions were going to unleash on the people of his own home state. Calling demonetisation an “uninformed, half-baked crusade” and GST a “badly designed and hastily implemented” measure, Singh also lamented the “low-level rhetoric” used by the ruling party.
“I wish the prime minister would find more dignified ways of impressing upon the crowds and seeking their votes…,” he said. “Just as you were recovering from one blow (of demonetisation), came the GST. Nobody consulted you or tried to understand how your dhandha (business) works,” he told a gathering of members of the local business community here. “The prime minister is from Gujarat, and he claims to understand Gujarat and the poor more than anyone else. How is it that he never understood the pains his decisions will unleash on you?” Singh asked.
“Your business works on trust and relationships. Without trust in each other, Surat will collapse. You extended this trust to the prime minister and his promise of ‘acchhe din’ (good days). The hope symbolised in those dreams now lies shattered,” he said.
In Surat alone, 89,000 powerlooms were sold as scrap and it led to a loss of 31,000 jobs, Singh said. “There are countless such examples from industrial clusters and big mandis (markets) from across the country.” China benefited from this situation, he claimed. “In FY 2016-17, India’s imports from China stood at Rs 1.96 lakh crore. During the same period in FY 2017-18, the imports from China increased to Rs 2.41 lakh crore. This unprecedented increase in imports by more than Rs 45,000 crore, a 23 per cent increase in a year, can be attributed largely to demonetisation and GST.
“These twin blows damaged India’s MSME sector and our businesses had to turn to Chinese imports at the cost of India jobs,” the senior Congress leader said. On demonetisation, Singh said, “This is an uninformed, half-baked crusade on black money where he (Modi) painted everyone as a thief, while real culprits have gotten away.” The Goods and Services Tax was “badly designed and hastily implemented”, the economist-turned-politician said.
Maintaining that demonetisation was not the solution to the problem of black money and tax evasion, Singh said the costs of demonetisation substantially exceeded its benefits, and the decision “proved to be mere bluster to reap political dividends while the real offenders have escaped”. Demonetisation and GST have also “sown a deep-rooted fear of tax terrorism among the business community”, he said. “At a time when the economy has slowed down considerably, despite favourable global macro-economic conditions, the fear of tax terrorism has eroded the confidence of the businesses to invest,” he said.
“This attitude of suspecting everyone to be a thief or anti-national, the low-level rhetoric is damaging the democratic discourse and has real consequences for how we relate to one another as citizens. Political leaders must stick to the high road,” he said. Singh said on every social indicator, from infant and maternal mortality rates to female literacy, Gujarat has fallen behind the best performing states, including Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
