Robust new economy for New India: Jayant Sinha defends Modi govt after father Yashwant's hard-hitting critique

Jayant Sinha's rebuttal is a response to "several" recent articles, but it comes a day after another national daily carried Yashwant Singh's scathing critique of the Modi government - and Arun Jaitley in particular.

IndiaToday.in  | Edited by Ganesh Kumar Radha Udayakumar
New Delhi, September 28, 2017 | UPDATED 08:00 IST
Jayant SinhaJayant Sinha

Far from heading towards the "hard landing" his father Yashwant Sinha predicted, the "robust new economy" created by the Narendra Modi government "will power long-term growth and job creation for 'New India'," Minister of State Jayant Sinha has written in a leading national newspaper.

Jayant Sinha's rebuttal is a response to "several" recent articles, but it comes a day after another national daily carried Yashwant Singh's scathing critique of the Modi government - and Arun Jaitley in particular.

Sinha pere, who was once Atal Bihari Vajpayee's finance minister, called demonetisation "an unmitigated economic disaster," and said GST was "badly conceived and poorly implemented."

But he reserved his strongest criticism for the finance minister. "Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister (Arun Jaitley) is working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters," he wrote.

But for Jayant Sinha, many recent articles "draw sweeping conclusions from a narrow set of facts, and...miss the fundamental structural reforms that are transforming the economy."

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram tweeted that Jayant Sinha's article read like "a PIB (Press Information Bureau) press release."

"He should know that administrative changes are not structural reforms," he said. And there was more.

Yesterday, Chidambaram had praised Yashwant Sinha's op-ed, and said he had spoken truth to power. AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal said the article was "hard-hitting."

Meanwhile, as all this happens, there is more bad news for the Modi government: India Ratings and Research has predicted that India's GDP growth will fall to 6.7 per cent in 2017-2018.