Culmination of years of disastrous economic mismanagement by BJP govt: Tharoor on fall in growth rate

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], Nov 30 (ANI): Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday hit out at the Centre over the slump in economic growth and blamed it on the "disastrous economic mismanagement by the BJP government".
"What we are seeing today is, unfortunately, the culmination of many years of disastrous economic mismanagement by the BJP government," he said while speaking to ANI here.
The Congress MP termed demonetisation as a "self-inflicted" disaster and said that it was an impulsive, careless, and irresponsible action.
"This body blow to the economy was then followed by the hasty and botched implementation of GST...Demonetisation was a bad idea implemented badly. GST was a good idea implemented badly and this bad economic management by this government has brought us to the sorry pass where every quarter, our economic performance is plummeting," he said.
"Let me stress that Dr Manmohan Singh has made it very clear that the economic performance is a reflection of the way in which the society is functioning. It is a sum total of relationships in a society. In a society in which the BJP government has sown deep mistrust, has sown an attitude of religious division, bigotry and other kinds of hatred in our society...economic activity is bound to suffer. You cannot have this kind of divisive politics on one hand and a thriving economy on the other," he added.
Tharoor said that today we are living in a country in which the economic growth is collapsing.
"BJP government has to wake up and realise everything it is doing is going wrong...from its management of the economy to its handling of our society. Create an attitude of trust, stop mistrusting every businessman, every Opposition party decision, every initiative taken by the previous government," he said.
"Stop persecuting, harassing people...sending the Finance Minister to jail. This kind of attitude is not going to help create the atmosphere in which people will feel confident in our economy and we can see this in all the international media coverage of this government's shameful performance," he said.
Talking about the impacts of the slowdown in the economy, Tharoor said, "So we are looking at job crisis first of all. Secondly, the government will have lower revenue because growth is less. With lower revenue, it will not be able to fulfil all its welfare schemes...with the result that crisis in agriculture sector will not be easily resolved because government will not have the resources to help and we will end up in a situation where perhaps farmers' suicide which already is at record levels may continue this year as well."
"We are looking at a very, very dismal prospect in the immediate future unless some very dramatic measures are taken which should be not only economic, but also measures to restore trust and confidence in our society," said Tharoor.
The economic growth slowed to 4.5 per cent in the July to September quarter from 7.1 per cent in the corresponding period of last year, the government data showed on Friday.
The economy had a weak performance last quarter with the GDP growth rate dropping to 5 per cent.
The slowdown in Q2 FY20 was largely due to a sharp dip in the manufacturing sector and agriculture output, said the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in a statement.
The weak GDP growth in Q2 was also caused by grim industrial output data which contracted 0.4 per cent during the quarter against 3 per cent expansion in the preceding three months. (ANI)