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Congress targets Centre over joblessness, inflation ahead of Union budget
Calling the budget a ‘ruined economic landscape’, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is detached from the ‘real India’
New Delhi: The Congress party on Friday attacked the central government ahead of the Union budget, which will be presented by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23, on several issues, including joblessness, inflation, economic inequality, consumption, Foreign Direct Investment, and trade imbalance, among others.
Calling the budget a ‘ruined economic landscape’, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is detached from the ‘real India’. “The budget would reflect this detachment, benefitting only a selected few,” she said.
In a post addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on X, party president Mallikarjun Kharge said, “By telling one lie after another on Jobs, you are rubbing salt in the wounds of the Youth!” The senior lawmaker then asked three questions citing the discrepancies in data between the Reserve Bank of India and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Shrinate mentioned that economic inequality in India is worse than it was under British rule. “The topmost 1% of India’s population today owns 40.10% of the country’s wealth and the bottomest 50% of India’s population controls only 6.40% of the wealth”, she claimed.
She targeted the Centre over inflation and also fall in income levels among people. “Inflation is on the rise, and that is coupled with a fall in income levels among people. Close to 48% of families in this country are suffering from falling income and rising prices and that is leading to an increased dependency on savings to survive.”
The Congress leader mentioned that food inflation has consistently been over the 9% mark. “High prices and rising inflation have really broken the back of the poor and middle class of the country. The reality today is that people of this country have to pay more for food, clothes, transport, among other things,” she said.
Laying down crucial economic parameters, Shrinate said, “Joblessness should be one of the most important matters to be addressed in this year’s budget. Demonetisation, GST, and Covid led to a loss of 10.6 million jobs in the informal sector along with a loss of 270,000 central PSU jobs.” She also mentioned that the percentage of contract workers has risen from 13% in 2013 to 43% in 2022.
Concerned with the matter of muted consumption in the country, Shrinate said, “India is a consumption-based economy but despite price cuts in FMCG, consumption has remained muted.” She also spoke about the falling consumption in the automobile sector, mentioning the inventory of about Rs.60,000 crore cars that are left unsold.
Speaking about the ‘sluggish’ levels of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and rising trade imbalance and trade deficit, Shrinate said that from among India’s top ten trading partners, it has a trade deficit with nine of them.
“China is our largest trading partner with a bilateral trade of $118 billion out of which 80 billion dollars is trade deficit. We are funding the Chinese army for the incursions they are making in our country and we are making them rich,” she said.
The Congress leader also blamed the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government over the falling value of the rupee against the dollar. “PM Modi who once said that his dignity is intrinsically intertwined with the value of the rupee, inherited it at 58 to a dollar and now a dollar is 84 rupees,” she said.
Shrinate also blamed the government for falling investment in the agriculture, education and health sectors. She further said that the one thing that the BJP has successfully done is create monopolies in one sector after another – from steel and cement to telecom and aviation.
