By Srinivas Kamat
We have Arun Jaitley yet again trying to bluff his way out of trouble in the context of the Q4 2016-17 showing a drop and the annual GDP figures being nudged just a tad above 7% in line with the previous projections to shore up some credibility and like the proverbial fig leaf save this government from shame. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre’s standard norm has been to tell lies when it gets cornered on non-performance since untruths is its mantra. This as one has seen happens on almost every single issue. Take the economy which experts have argued in many ways that its growth is below 6% but then the government wanted to show it to be above 7% to contend that Demonetisation has had no effect. So what did it do? Faced with two options, the first being as is commonly said change or shift the goalposts which would not work in this case since the problem is more structural. The government thus resorted to the second option and that is, changed the rules of the game. This it did by asking the CSO to revise the basis of calculating our economic indices by changing the base years. With this as if like in a P C Sorcar magic act, growth which was in the low numbers jumped to above 7% and which was negative moved into the low growth numbers region. The head of the CSO in his lame defence for this action has said that every four years the base year of the indices should be changed to reflect ‘reality’. If this were so then a document indicating the methodology of this should have been put into the public domain, discussed among a group of experts consisting of economists and statisticians and then adopted. Otherwise the CSO is open to the charge of having us believe that all this while we were living in an ‘unreal’ world and are only now under the Modi dispensation getting a taste of ‘reality’! In line with the above the latest official GDP figures which came out this week show the growth to be 6.1% for Q4 of 2016-17, which is negative compared to the previous year and has pulled down the GDP to 7.1% for 2016-17. In fact the Gross Value Added – GVA, which is the GDP without the indirect taxes is much lower compared to the last year for the the Q4 as well as the annual figures. Achieving above 7% growth for 2016-17 was suspect without the base year jugglery. This data in fact confirms that Demonetisation did affect the GDP irrespective of Jaitley’s rejection of the premise. The unorganised sector was the hardest hit but with the above it is clear that contrary to government claims the organised sector was not left unscathed by the withdrawal of the Rs. 500 & the Rs. 1000 denomination notes. The funny thing is that the Rs. 2000 continues to be unpopular with the people and there have been many demands to bring back the Rs. 1000 note. The Rs. 2000 note in contrast that was brought in to eliminate black money has only facilitated the ease of acquiring it since storing black money needs now littler space. The situation with the Rs. 2000 note is clearly a comedy of errors! This also shows up the inability of the BJP government to read the minds of the people while implementing important measures. This was the only decisive government that the Narendra Modi government took in the last 3 years and even that was a great mess-up, unless Jaitley wants to talk about the other ‘decisive’ action that Narendra Modi took in dropping in for a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif after which we have had ‘amicable and peaceful’ relations with Pakistan! As for Jaitley’s rebuttal that the 3 years of this government’s handling of the economy has been to show jobless growth because the unorganised sector has not been surveyed, one could why has this government not done this survey. Is it for fear that their worst nightmares about unemployment in this sector would be confirmed? The only thing that Narendra Modi has been good at is in winning elections and the handling by him and his team leaves a lot to be desired.
