- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
SOON after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman came up with a slew of measures aiming to see an economic revival on Monday (28), the opposition Congress chipped in to criticise the Narendra Modi government. It claimed the measures that Sitharaman announced will deliver nothing but headlines and opined that the Centre should focus on spurring demand to revive the economy it says “continues to be in the doldrums”.
Congress Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh said on Twitter, “Credit guarantee schemes have not guaranteed revival since India’s economic downturn. FM Nirmala Sitharaman needs to realise that doing the same thing over and over again delivers headlines but little else.”
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‘Keep the headlines going’
He also mocked prime minister Narendra Modi saying the latter first gave instructions and when the finance minister announced it, he applauded. “First PM instructs. Then FM announces. Then PM applauds. Waah! Such ‘jugalbandi’ (duet) to keep the headlines going, while the economy remains in doldrums,” he said.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the government on Tuesday (29) saying no household in India could spend the government’s relief package on its daily news and called it “another sham”. “No family can spend FM’s ‘economic package’ on their living-food-medicine-child’s school fees,” said the member of Parliament from Wayanad, Kerala, on Twitter in Hindi.
‘Credit guarantee is no credit’
Senior Congress leader and India’s former finance minister P Chidambaram also slammed the government over the package saying the answer to the current “crisis” is to incentivise demand by putting money in the hands of people, especially the poor and lower middle class.
“Some elementary truths: Credit guarantee is not credit. Credit is more debt. No banker will lend to a debt-ridden business,” he said in one of tweets in reaction to the stimulus package.
Chidambaram said in another tweet that debt-burdened or cash-starved businesses do not want more credit but non-credit capital. “More supply does not mean more demand (consumption). On the contrary, more demand (consumption) will trigger more supply,” he said.
Saying demand will not grow in an economy which has seen losses of jobs and reduction in wages, Chidambaram said the answer lied in putting money in the hands of the people, especially the poor and lower middle class.
