Who are you fooling, Mr Jaitley? 

The cat is out of the bag. Indian economy is slowing down. The national GDP for the Jan-March 2017 quarter is pegged at 6.1%. It was disclosed by none other than the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the official data collector of the Government of India. Not only is the economy going down, even other parameters of national economy are hardly in the pink of health.

The growth of eight core sectors — coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and electricity — declined to 2.5% this April while it was pegged 8.7% in April 2016.

Figures speak loud and clear. We may brag about being the fastest growing economy in the world. But the fact remains we are going down a bit too rapidly. It is nothing but demonetisation, stupid.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, however, wants us to believe that to link declining GDP growth rate to demonetisation is “erroneous”. “There was impact of global factors. There could be some impact in one quarter or two quarters of one particular factor (demonetisation)’’, Jaitely declared while defending the indefensible at a hurriedly convened press conference after the CSO released economic data.

Well, Jaitely might have forgotten those terrible post-demonetisation days. He perhaps escaped the nightmare. But the nation still remembers those harrowing days of 2016 November-December stretching on to Jan 2017 when Indians had to beg for their own money. Oh, those turbulent times of long serpentine queues outside ATM machines; People sleeping in the middle of the night under open sky, waiting outside ATM booths to somehow take out only ₹2,000, the limit fixed for withdrawal in a day. And, oh, that bitter experience of ATM getting out of currency stock right before your turn came to insert your debit card into the ATM.

How painful and bitter were the days when everyone felt so insecure without cash!

What kind of harassment the country had to undergo because of a stupid idea! There were patients who were turned out of private hospitals because they could not pay in new currency notes. There were reports of deaths because of hardships faced by people who could not withdraw their own money. I distinctly remember a cashier of State Bank of India at a Bhopal SBI branch dying of heart attack. He could not bear the chaos and confusion caused by the irate crowd to get ₹ 2,000. The poor man died in the confusion. An old man in Kolkata died outside an ATM booth waiting for his turn to take out money.

There were so many stories of factories shutting shop for lack of cash. Agra shoe industry collapsed; Firozabad bangle factories shut shop. Real estate, both construction and sale-purchase, suddenly came to a halt. The entire informal sector of the economy virtually came to a grinding halt, forcing millions of workers to go jobless; thousands were forced to go back to their villages from metros like Delhi and Mumbai to fend for themselves in their home towns after facing forced unemployment and becoming cashless.

Remember, workers being told to go home and look for some new job while there were none around. Casual workers going without money. Shops wearing deserted looks without buyers. Where was money to buy anything? Demonetisation forced millions virtually into beggary because there was no money left even to meet daily needs. I remember a friend coming to me and borrowing ₹1,000 because he had no money to buy medicine for his mother.

Was all this humgama worth the trouble only because it suddenly dawned upon the Prime Minster and his advisors that all kinds of ‘under the table’ economic activities would come to a halt with demonetization? He told the nation: all the black money would be flushed out; only the rich would be troubled while the poor would reap the benefits.

Remember Modi’s daily lectures on benefits of “digitisation’’. Do you really believe that all kinds of ‘black’ dealings in the country have come to an end! Have the rich really turned poorer and the poor is now richer!

Who are you fooling Jaitely; what are you trying to tell the country ! You say: “we have taken big bold decisions”. The fact of the matter is that your “big and bold decision” has dragged the Indian economy in the last quarter to 6.1% per cent; eight core infrastructure sectors have also been pulled down. We are no longer the fastest growing economy as China has once again overtaken us. Why were Indians pushed to pay such a heavy price, could you tell us, Jaitely?

Well, it is now official that demonetisation hit us hard and left India poorer despite whatever the finance minister may now like us to believe. The big question now is: why did the Prime Minister take the trouble to go for the action that adversely hit India and Indians? Who advised the Prime Minster to go ahead with such a damaging move? Was it the finance minister’s advice; did the RBI governor push demonetisation; or, was it the Prime Minister’s own idea? The country needs an explanation. Would you explain or would you still brag about the “big bold decision” that pulled down Indian economy, Mr Finance Minister!