A day after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley claimed that India had moved from being in a state of policy paralysis to structural reforms, his predecessor P. Chidambaram claimed that the growth rate of the past four years under the NDA was lower than the UPA’s 10 years average.
In a series of tweets, the former Finance Minister said the World Bank’s former chief economist Kaushik Basu had stated that India’s growth rate was lower than the 30-year average and yet Mr. Jaitley claimed the growth rate was better.
“What is the direction of NDA’s growth rate? Investments? Savings? Credit growth? All downward,” Mr. Chidambaram tweeted.
On Friday, while replying to the debate on the Union Budget in the Upper House, the Finance Minister had said that India was no longer part of the “fragile five” (a term used to refer to emerging markets heavily dependent on foreign investment inflows) and had become a bright spot. He had also rejected charges of fiscal indiscipline levelled by Mr. Chidamabaram while opening the debate on Budget on Thursday.
In his Budget speech, Mr. Jaitley had said, “India achieved an average growth of 7.5% in first three years of our government. Indian economy is now 2.5 trillion dollar economy, the seventh largest in the world.”
“What is the average of 4 years of NDA? It is 7.3 under new methodology and lower than UPA’s 10 year average,” asserted the former Finance Minister.
Mr. Chidambaram posed 12 questions to the Finance Minister and called announcements on national health protection, minimum support price and jobs as jumlas (gimmicks) of the government.
The debate on the Budget in the Rajya Sabha has been an interesting duel between the lawyer-turned-Finance Ministers. Praising the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA), Dr. Arvind Subramanian, the former Finance Minister had said that the CEA was good doctor but the Government was a “terrible patient.”
Hitting back a day later, Mr. Jaitley said a “terrible patient” can be treated by a good doctor and that the UPA had a “terrible doctor”.
Jaitley said the government had undertaken several structural reforms — from GST and the Insolvency Code to linking subsidies with Aadhaar — something that he accused the UPA government of abandoning.
