Congress releases alternative ‘Economic Survey’ a day before

Warning that the economy is poised precariously and needs to be handled with “care and wisdom”, the Congress on Monday released a white paper, ‘The Real State of the Economy’, a day before the Government is expected to release its own Economic Survey.

The report takes a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s boast that his Government would create one crore jobs every year and points out that the Government’s own Labour Bureau admits that jobs created in 2016 were just 1.5 lakh.

The figure, the report points out, is a sharp fall from 11 lakh jobs created in in 2011 and 4.2 lakh in 2014. The white paper quotes Government reports to give a grim picture. It points out among other things:

• While the PM has signed investment deals worth around $500 Billion with the potential to push India’s GDP growth to 20% or more, foreign direct investment and private investment have both failed to pick up.
• For the first time in 14 years, the economy is seeing a contraction in the Gross Fixed Capital Formation, as per data released by the Central Statistical Organisation.
• Indian corporate sector has reported a fall in Net Fixed Assets and their wage bill is decelerating

The report hits out at the declining Agricultural Growth Rate and lambasts the Government for ‘white washing’ figures of allegedly record wheat production. The claim, says the report, is suspect because of the Government’s decision to reduce import duty on wheat from 25% to zero, industry projections and also because of the import of 2-3 million tonnes of wheat.

The report also highlights the distress caused by Demonetisation and the crisis in rural India. Even MGNREGA is not working well enough to provide some relief to people. Government’s own data, for example, show that during the first 50 days of 2015-16, 2.27 crore people demanded jobs under the scheme but only 1.1 crore of them actually got work.

The report was released by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Rajeev Gowda, MP who had supervised the compilation declared that as a responsible Opposition, the Congress plans to release a report on the economy every year ahead of the Union Budget.

The ANI quoted the I&B minister Venkaiah Naidu as saying that he was not surprised at the criticism of the Government contained in the report as “both Dr Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram are failed economists.”