Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 2

In a no holds barred attack on the UPA regime, PM Narendra Modi on Monday said the Congress-led dispensation left the Indian economy in “unbelievable decay with even the budget figures suspicious”.

Taking swipes on his predecessor Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who continue to question NDA government’s record on economy, the PM, in an interview to ‘Swarajya’, said, “In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an economist PM and a know-it-all Finance Minister. We all knew the economy was in the doldrums.” The PM took a range of questions on jobs, farm distress, internal security and said had he revealed the state of the economy in 2014 it could have caused a major crisis.

“The details about the decay in the economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over,” he said, adding that his government took a conscious decision to act in national interest rather than play politics on the issue.

“In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment. In the midst of this, imagine a White Paper giving intricate details of the extent of damage. Instead of being a mollifier, it would be a multiplier of the distress. There were several landmines laid in various sectors,” said the PM, noting that today India is the fastest growing large economy of the world, foreign investment is at an all-time high, GST has revolutionised the tax regime and India is an easier place to do business than ever before.

On lack of jobs, a regular charge against his government, PM Modi said “more than a lack of jobs, the issue is a lack of data on jobs”. “This is what needs fixing first. With data from the Employees Provident Fund Organisation showing a rise in formal sector jobs, informal sector jobs too would have risen, as would jobs created by Mudra loans. Our traditional matrix of measuring jobs is simply not good enough to measure new jobs in the new economy of New India,” the PM noted.

Confident of achieving the BJP’s ambitious target of doubling farmers’ income by 2022, the PM spoke of a four-fold strategy involving cutting inputs costs, raising prices of produce, ensuring minimum harvest and post-harvest losses, and creating more avenues for income generation.