Shah's 'jumla' in august company

New Delhi: Amit Shah has found himself in the august company of Victor Hugo and John Maynard Keynes.

If the French author and the British economist had been quoted by Manmohan Singh earlier, it was the BJP president's turn to be quoted on Sunday.

The former Prime Minister, who speaks with extreme care, has for the first time used the word " jumla" to describe Narendra Modi's alluring promises.

Jumla literally means idiomatic expression but it has come to stand for "gimmicks" ever since the BJP president used the word in 2015 to explain why each Indian's bank account was not richer by Rs 15 lakh as many voters had hoped for when they voted for Modi.

Singh's rapier thrust at the AICC plenary came on a day the Congress party's economic resolution cautioned the government about the folly of hiding behind rhetoric, inane slogans and meaningless acronyms.

Addressing the plenary on Sunday, the former Prime Minister said: "The BJP government has messed up the economy. When Modiji was campaigning, he made lots of tall promises. Those promises have not been fulfilled. He promised to provide two crore jobs: we have not seen even two lakh jobs. In fact, the ill-considered demonetisation and the hastily implemented GST have destroyed jobs."

Singh added: "Modiji himself said we will double farmers' incomes in six years' time. If you have to double farmers' incomes in six years, you need a growth rate of 12 per cent per annum and that is unthinkable. It is one of those jumla-type statements."

The Cambridge-educated economist usually does not use such words, preferring Hugo in his maiden budget speech in 1991 that changed India. "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come," Singh had quoted Hugo then.

In December 2016, when Singh launched a blistering attack in the Rajya Sabha on the demonetisation, he had quoted Keynes: "Even those who say that this measure will do harm or cause distress in the short term but be in the interests of the country in the long run should be reminded of what John Keynes said once: 'In the long run, all of us are dead'."

On Sunday, Singh pointed out that the economic survey had itself said that "just when the world economy has risen steadily from a growth rate of 2.8 per cent in 2014 to a projected growth rate of 3.8 per cent in 2018, the Indian economy has decoupled itself from the world economy".

The former Prime Minister also expressed concern on foreign policy, particularly referring to the neighbours: "We have problems but they are to be sorted out peacefully and not by shouting at each other."

He said the Modi government had mismanaged the Jammu and Kashmir problem as never before.