Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha on Saturday described the NDA government’s White Paper as an attempt to whitewash its unfulfilled promises, the prevailing job crisis and price rise.
Congress leader K.C. Venugopal said the White Paper was silent on demonetisation and its impact, unemployment and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to bring back black money stashed in foreign countries and give Rs 15 lakh to every household.
Venugopal said former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had described the demonetisation as organised loot and legalised plunder and predicted that it would bring down the GDP growth rate by 2 per cent.
He said the document hid the hard truth about the impact of the demonetisation on the economy. According to the RBI, over 99 per cent of the demonetised currency had been returned to it through banks, suggesting that the attempt to unearth black money in the system had failed.
Venugopal reminded the Treasury benches about Modi’s promise to create two crore jobs per year after his government came to power and sought details about the jobs created in the last 10 years.
Citing data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), Venugopal said the unemployment rate among youths aged between 20 and 24 years was 44 per cent during October-December last year.
He also asked about the promise to develop 100 smart cities and achieve a $5-trillion economy by 2024-25.
Venugopal said life expectancy in India had declined from 69 during the UPA regime to 67 because spending on health as a percentage of GDP remained static despite the Covid-19 outbreak. He said the UPA government enacted rights-based laws on education, employment, food and information and asked the NDA government to name a single game-changing flagship scheme.
Trinamul Congress leader Saket Gokhale said the Modi government had pushed the target of various schemes to 2047 under the garb of Viksit Bharat after failing to fulfil them.
He said the economic health of the common people had deteriorated, household savings touched a 50-year low last year and loans taken by corporates had become non-performing assets and had been written off. Instead of bringing back absconding loan defaulters, investigating agencies are after Opposition leaders, Gokhale said.
CPM leader John Brittas said states such as Kerala have been denied their rightful share from the central devolution of funds because of the 15th Finance Commission wrongly using the 2011 census data. He called the White Paper an election propaganda.
Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said that the Modi government had failed to deliver on women’s security and price rise. “Corruption has become rampant in government offices while the government has weaponised the ED and CBI against Opposition parties,” she added.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman cited Periodic Labour Force Survey data to claim that the unemployment rate had decreased from 6 per cent in 2017-18 to 3.2 per cent in 2022-23. She said the government was organising Rozgar Melas every month and 6.32 lakh candidates had got appointment letters in the last 15 months.
