'White Paper A Political Document That Shows BJP Govt's Failure': Supriya Shrinate In Assam

Supriya Shrinate called the White Paper presented by the BJP-led government a sham, which highlighted how much the Centre has "messed up the Indian economy".

Guwahati: National spokesperson of the Indian National Congress (INC) Supriya Shrinate on Wednesday termed the White Paper released by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Central government a "joke".

Addressing a press conference at the Rajiv Bhawan in Assam’s Guwahati, Shrinate said the White Paper proves that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “minions” know well just how much they have "messed up the Indian economy" and are "desperate to blame it on someone else somehow". She said the brazenness with which the Union Finance Ministry has been used to issue such a "political document" raises many concerns. "This sham of a document has, after all, been prepared by officers who served in the past governments as well," she said.

“Government is in continuity, just like policy decisions are. These officers have been used to reject their own work done in the past and this is the worst kind of political undermining of Indian bureaucracy, which is supposed to be an independent institution," Shrinate said. "The reality is that this highly skewed and biased document would have found no takers had it been issued by the BJP, which is nothing but a propaganda cell. That is why it needed the Finance Ministry to do its dirty job. Everything the previous government did is criticised without any objective evaluation of this government’s tenure, its programmes, and policies,” Shrinate said.

Commenting on the 10-year report card of economic performance during the BJP’s tenure at the Centre, Shrinate said that despite the constant rejigging of growth data, economic growth has been lower in the past 10 years in contrast to the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s tenure, which was 6.7 per cent under the UPA government and 5.9 per cent under the Narendra Modi-led government.  

“Income, consumption, and investment are stagnated, there is a sharp dip in household savings, unemployment is growing, youth unemployment has skyrocketed, manufacturing and services employment share have fallen, rural real wages have remained stagnant partly because of the influx into agriculture, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act [MGNREGA] spending has still not come down years after the pandemic, suggesting continued distress, private investment has fallen steadily, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has fallen as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," she said. 

Referring to the promises made by the BJP in 2014, Shrinate said: “Providing 2 crore jobs a year, bringing back black money stashed abroad in 100 days, Rs 15 lakh to every citizen in their bank accounts, petrol and diesel at Rs 35 a litre, doubling farmers’ income by 2022, achieving USD 5 trillion economy by 2022, housing for every family, and 100 smart cities by 2022... what happened to these promises made in 2014?"

Shrinate further said that the BJP has been a "total failure" on the most important short-term issue facing the country, jobs, and the most important long-term issue, the health and education of the people.