Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu:
With the
rupee at an eight-month-high and Sensex at an all-time high, Finance Minister P Chidambaram slams theories that attribute this to the hope rally due to the euphoria that BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi could lead the next government.
Speaking to NDTV on his campaign trail seeking votes for his son Karti Chidambaram, the Finance Minister said, "The rally is due to the fact of a stable government. In the last 18 months we have taken a number of measures to strengthen the economy, we have contained the fiscal deficit, we have contracted the current account deficits substantially, we have added to our reserves, we have tamed inflation. This is the reason why the market is responding, not because of some kind of fond hope. I only wish that the firm hand on a wheel can continue for some time."
Mr Chidambaram refuted the business and industry's perception that subsidy has become the hallmark of the UPA and that Mr Modi is seen to be growth oriented.
"Even Modi won't make such an extravagant claim... It's obvious that big business and I am using the word big with capital B. Big business is supporting the BJP but that's because Mr Modi is known to favour crony capitalism. The hallmark of UPA government is growth. We delivered 8.5 per cent growth in the first five years and we have delivered 7.2 per cent growth in the next four years. The NDA record does not even match 7.2 per cent."
When asked whether there is a mistake which he as Finance Minister thinks the UPA should have never committed, Mr Chidambaram said, "In 2009 the whole world was sold on the theory of monetary expansion, what they call unconventional monetary policy; every country spent more in the hope that spending will anchor growth, India did the same thing. In hindsight what we did in 2009 was right but perhaps, perhaps, we should have pulled back beginning 2011, the pullback started only after I returned to the Finance Ministry in August 2012 and we have shown result, if we had pulled back a year earlier these results would have been visible even last year."
The Finance Minister had a different take on whether retrospective tax was a mistake. "Well I have explained it is not a retrospective tax, it is a clarificatory amendment that has retro-active operations. I think there is a vast difference in law between retrospective tax and clarificatory amendment which has a retro-active application, in fact because the perception is that it is a retrospective tax, we have offered conciliation - it is Vodafone which is turning down the request for conciliation."
Mr Chidambaram also slammed AIADMK chief and Tamil Madu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for her contention that he did nothing for the state or for his constituency.
"It's a pity that a Chief Minister does not know what's happening in her state" he said. "I wonder what her intelligence department is doing, what her district administration is doing. We have published what we have done in this constituency and in a couple of days when I address a public meeting, a series of public meetings, I will respond to her charge that the Central government has done nothing in Tamil Nadu. If she believes what she says, it means that the Chief Minister is completely cut off from reality, that she is ignorant of central government projects. She is ignorant of the central government records in Tamil Nadu. I wish she will travel by road, she will travel by rail, then she can see what's happening on the ground. If she is in the air all the time she doesn't know what's happening on the ground," he added.