Shun vendetta, listen to sane voices: Manmohan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 1

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today urged the government to put aside vendetta politics to restore the economy, even as more bad news came in about falling GST collections and plummeting automobile sales.

Terming the economic crises man-made, Dr Singh appealed to PM Narendra Modi to shun vendetta politics and to “reach out to all sane voices and thinking minds, to steer our economy out of this man-made crisis”.

Dr Singh said “all-round mismanagement” had led to the slowdown.

His observations came on a day when GST collections for August dipped below the Rs 1 lakh crore mark. Two days earlier, official figures showed that the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) had slid to 5 per cent in the first quarter, the lowest quarterly growth in the past six years.

World’s top three rating agencies are also pessimistic about Indian economic growth picking up in the next couple of quarters. Dr Singh also referred to the low GDP growth rate figures for the April-June 2019-20 quarter, while asserting that “India cannot afford to continue down this path”.

The GDP figures showed “we are in the midst of a prolonged slowdown”, he said, expressing confidence that the country had the potential to grow at a much faster rate if PM Modi was to shun vendetta politics and take counsel from a wider base.

‘Prolonged slump’

The state of the economy is deeply worrying. GDP growth rate of 5% signals prolonged slowdown. India has potential to grow at much faster rate but all-round mismanagement has resulted in slowdown. —Manmohan Singh, Former Prime Minister