Mr Sinha, who was sidelined after the BJP returned to power in 2014 and has often been critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, severely notes what he calls “the mess the Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley) has made” of the economy and remarks that many may share his views but are silent out of “fear”. He has criticised his own government’s economic performance. Modi needs to take these critiques seriously. His own party workers are digging the ground below his feet. He can’t turn blind and self-boast on developments. BJP has to agree that the bad implementation of GST that too during peak festival season production and major season for exports is slowly killing the industry should have been done in March or April. Bhalla keeps on calling for RBI to reduce interest rates and draws comparisons to capital rich countries like USA and says our interest rate should be at 2-3 per cent now.
No one cared about the middle class savers, senior citizens and pensioners whose only investment/income is the bank fixed deposit. Almost Rs 8 lakh crores worth of loans are NPA where in they pay zero rupee as interest. Still they are unable to turnaround. What is the point of rate cut to 4-5 per cent when zero percent is not helping? In addition the banks are losing interest of Rs 80000 to Rs 1000000 crores interest because of this NPA mess. Isn’t this a scam and government instead of selling junk banks and sending home corrupt and inefficient Chairmen are sitting idle? Many questions remain unanswered, how have Government Banks lent Rs 900 crores to Reliance Communication this year, the company is junk as per rating agencies. Is there a scam here? Why government is not doing anything?
The Banking system is in a chaos and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has done nothing to fix it for last three and a half years. No single Bank chairman has been sacked for creating the clutter. Not one corrupt Industrialist has gone to jail so far for cheating the banks by diverting its funds. There is no one in this government who understands the economy. It is run by clueless Babus, lawyers and crony economists like Bhalla and Debroy. The few good men we had like Raghuram Rajan and Panagariya who have left due to dirty politics, their potentials were abused.
Yashwant Sinha may not be the best Indian Finance Minister but at least he has courage to rectify the errors. He went about his job out of a true love for his country and that is what has made him utter strong words in anguish, even at the expense of his party. Also, Jayant Sinha was shunted out of the finance ministry because the BJP is against those who possess calibre to perform. No minister in the present government at the centre has better credentials than Jayant Sinha to steer the Indian economy out of these difficult times. I am happy, Yashwant Sinha showed courage to stand up and say the truth for billion of Indians who are facing hardships every day. The voters are conditioned in the name of religion and they do not understand what went wrong in past three years. Since demonetisation the economic tragedy opened its mouth wide. Economies are destroyed more easily than they are built.
Demonetisation and levy tax on everything are destroying economy and people’s faith in the Indian democracy. Private investment has shrunk as never before in two decades, industrial production has collapsed, agriculture is in distress, construction industry, a big employer of the work force, is in the depression, the rest of the service sector is also in the slow lane, exports have dwindled, sector after sector of the economy is in distress, demonetisation has proved to be an unmitigated economic disaster, a badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with businesses and sunk many of them and countless millions have lost their jobs with hardly any new opportunities coming the way of the new entrants to the labour market. BJP has spoiled the atmosphere in the country by hate campaign, lies and show off. No investment, no industry, no jobs and no employment. Only Modi, Modi and just Modi. People’s money is being wasted on larger than life campaigns and all those drive went unnoticed by citizens. Modi government has a very narrow vision for the country, just limited to few industrial houses. Consequently the government has failed miserably to address social issue, as well as economy. We have to live another 19 months with the insensitive and incompetent government.
The GST is such a pain that we are forced to shell out the GST component of our invoice before the 7th day of every subsequent month (as against every quarter under the Service Tax regime) much before we receive the payment of our invoice. We are forced to utilise bank credit limits (and pay interest on it) even for such tax obligations as most of our clients refuse to pay the invoiced amount within 30 to 45 days within which time yet another round of invoicing happens and we once again are forced to meet our GST commitments. There is huge burden on small firms. The BJP government is just not bothered. The Finance Minister is just utmost careless.
Healthy criticism is always welcomed. But I wish Yashwant Sinha has some alternate ideas to suggest. His outbursts should not end up as unhappy soul’s cry. More than that his purpose should not lead to tell the world that the government has made a mistake, he should possess very strong and constructive proposals too.
The Congress, which has struggled to build a campaign around Narendra Modi government’s failures on the economic front, has received a shot in the arm after the latest criticism by Sinha. In recent weeks, most opposition parties, but particularly the Congress leadership, have chosen to focus their attack on the Narendra Modi government on its handling of the economy, lack of jobs and farm distress. However, Swamy, Gurmurthy and Sinha’s aren’t the only voices of dissent from within. Some of the senior ministers are said to be upset with the way things are being run within the party and the government, and how little they are consulted. The latest attack by Swamy, Gurumurthy and Sinha is seemingly aimed at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. But there are all signs of a churn within the BJP, even as the PM and party chief Amit Shah prepare for forthcoming electoral battles in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, and seek to increase their sway.
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