Former finance minister P Chidambaram.
THE CONGRESS-LED UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments delivered the highest decadal growth since Independence, former finance minister P Chidambaram said Sunday while claiming that the management of the economy today is “not in very competent hands”.
His comments came two days after a committee, which was tasked with recommending ways to strengthen India’s data collection system, released new back series data which showed the Indian economy grew at a faster pace in two terms of the UPA government between 2004-05 and 2013-14, when compared with average growth recorded in the first four years of the NDA government.
“Since the advent of the BJP-led NDA government in May 2014, there has been a determined effort to run down the record of the two UPA governments under Manmohan Singh during 2004-2009 and 2009-2014. A lot of confusion was sown and the Modi government added to the confusion by changing the base year from 2004-05 to 2011-12… The back series data is now available. The numbers prove the dictum that truth cannot be suppressed forever and truth has a way of emerging amidst a torrent of lies and distortions,” Chidambaram said at a press conference.
He said the “numbers put out by two eminent statistician economists — Sudipto Mundle and N R Bhanumurthy — shows that UPA I and UPA II were far ahead of NDA I and NDA II. The numbers speak for themselves…. UPA I and UPA II were miles ahead.”
Reacting to the claim, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the data was not official and that it had not been accepted by the government yet. “It seems whenever the Congress party is unable to succeed, it starts celebrating its failures. (During the UPA regimes) Inflation was rising and they were unable to check current account deficit, whereas under the Narendra Modi government India has become one of the six largest economies in the world,” he said.
“During Narendra Modi’s regime, the country has transformed from the Fragile Five Economies to fabulous few destinations,” Patra said.
At the press conference, taking a dig at the BJP government, Chidambaram said, “The management of the economy today is not in very competent hands… Under Dr Manmohan Singh, the management of the economy was under more competent hands.” Asked whether the unavailability of regular finance minister is responsible for failures, he said, “I thought there were three Finance Ministers, one is the de facto; one de jure and one invisible.”
“There is no dearth of people in this country who can manage the economy. Unfortunately, they are not found in the present government. And every world renowned economist who has come to work under this government has left. For some reason, no one with a world wide reputation is willing to serve under this government…” he added.