CHANDIGARH: Calling Modi's financial policies thoughtless in terms of backward trend showing in every sector, Punjab Sports and Youth Services Minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi said that the Bhartiya Janta Party's Union Government has needed a fiscal guidance from renowned financial experts such as former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.
In a press communiqué issued here today, Rana Sodhi said that Indian economy has turned a full circle in the last five years after demonetisation. Now government is focussed on Monetisation 2021, this is nothing but the great Indian assets sale. The government may still choose to call it another reform and perhaps another achievement but how will this asset sale prove beneficial for us when we are trailing down the targets of public expenditure.
He said that the union government wants to sale 50 railway stations, 150 trains, telecom assets, power transmission assets, sports stadia, stake in airports, petroleum pipelines and shipping berths in ports. Everything is put on sale but after that what is the plan to run this country. These part time policies raised question marks and showed dearth in vision. Terming the decision of bank privatization a blunder, he stated that this government has no right to sale national assets when they are not been able to create a single 'Navratna'. Most of these assets put on sale, were not created during the last six years of the Modi government and would be a part of their ‘inheritance’ from governments of the past.
Describing Modi's approach as ostrich-like focus, Rana Sodhi said that since revenue receipts are so poor, the government has been consistently borrowing to finance its current (revenue) expenditure. He said that origin of the ongoing crisis in the Indian economy was the fateful night of November 8, 2016. He also revisited the Dr. Manmohan Singh’s prescient words in Parliament ''demonetisation would lead to 2% drop in the GDP'' but these words not heeded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the contrary, a badly designed and hastily implemented flawed Goods and Services Tax (GST) followed, further devastating vast numbers of medium and small enterprises, as well as the vast informal sector of our economy. Together, these twin disasters robbed millions of their livelihoods and plunged the Indian economy into a prolonged slump that predates the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rana Sodhi said that low international oil prices presented the government an opportunity to encourage a consumption-led revival by passing the benefits to the people but the government has taken the adverse way to fill up its exchequer at the stake of common man. ''The Modi government continues to squeeze every family’s shrinking budget through excessive petroleum taxes and cesses'' he stated.