'Tell Modi govt to invite us, we will tell them what to do': Chidambaram on economic slowdown

A day after getting out of jail on bail, former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, in a press conference, tore into the Modi government on the issue of the economy, saying it has left India economy into ruins. He also said the Modi government should invite the Congress party to get the economy out of the gloom. "The government is clueless on the economy, it is stubborn and mulish in defending catastrophic mistakes like demonetisation, flawed GST, tax terrorism," said the former Union minister.

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When a reporter asked him if he had any suggestions for the Modi government to revive the economy, Chidambaram said the reporter should go and ask the Modi government to invite the Congress to discuss the state of the economy and then he would tell them what to do. "Congress and some other parties are better equipped to pull the economy out of slowdown but we have to wait for better times," Chidambaram further said.

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In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chidambaram said he had been unusually silent on the economy. "He has left it to his ministers to indulge in bluff and bluster. The net result, as the Economist put it, is that the government has turned out to be an 'incompetent manager' of the economy."

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Chidambaram said the RBI had revised its GDP growth projections for the fiscal year 2020 from 7.4 per cent in February down to 5 per cent now, which was "unprecedented" in India's history. "We will be lucky to end the year if growth touches 5%. Please remember Dr Arvind Subramanian's caution that 5% under this government, because of suspect methodology, is not 5% but less by about 1.5%," he said.

The former Union finance minister further mocked the Modi government saying it perhaps did not know the difference between cyclical and structural slowdown. "I don't think anyone in the government has any clue about what is cyclical and what is structural. And those who knew, they threw them out," the Congress leader said, adding the former RBI governors Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel, and former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian were all shown the door by the Modi government.

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