Rahul Gandhi this morning said the government is "attacking informal sector".
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi this morning accused the government of attacking the informal sector with its three moves- demonetisation, lockdown and GST. "India's economy is witnessing a slowdown for the first time in 40 years, this will be confirmed today. Those who can't practice Satyagrah (dedication to truth) are blaming God," the ex-Congress chief tweeted, referring to the GDP data that will be released today and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's "act of God" remark last week.
The 50-year-old Congress leader suggested that the former Congress-led UPA government had shielded India from the "economic storm" in 2008, adding that the government is "trying to turn you into slaves". "The BJP government has attacked the informal sector. They are trying to turn you into slaves. In 2008, the world was hit by a severe economic storm. The United States, Europe, China, Japan - all of them were hit by the turbulence. In the US, banks were affected, firms were shut down. But India was not affected," Mr Gandhi is heard saying in the video.
"I went to Manmohan Singh (the then-prime minister) and asked him- 'The whole world has been hit by recession. Why is India unaffected?' He said- 'Rahul, you have to understand. India has two economic structures - formal, which has bigger firms, and informal, which includes MSMEs, farmers. As long as the informal sector is unaffected, the country can hold its ground'," the Congress MP from Kerala's Wayanad is heard recalling his conversation with the ex-prime minister.
"Demonetsation, GST and lockdown - these three moves by the BJP government have attacked the informal structure. It's not correct to think that lockdown was a last-minute move, and that it wasn't done deliberately. All these three moves were taken to hit the informal sector," the ex-Congress chief adds.
"If Prime Minister wants to run the government, he needs media, marketing. The informal sector has a lot of money which the government can't touch. They want to break this sector and extort this money from them. The effects of this attack on informal sector will be seen soon. The results will be that India won't be able to produce jobs... because the informal sector produces 90 per cent of the jobs. Once the informal sector is destroyed India won't be able to produce jobs," he stresses.
Mr Gandhi sums up the video saying: "You are the ones who run this country, You take us forward and there is a conspiracy against you. You are being cheated and there is an attempt to turn you into slaves. We have to understand this attack and the entire country has to unite to fight against this."
The latest attack comes as India's gross domestic product or GDP is widely expected to have shrunk in the April-June period. Many economists expect the country to suffer its worth quarterly de-growth since the mid-1990s, with estimates of contraction as bad as 25.9 per cent.
Last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, referring to coronavirus pandemic, had said: "This year we are facing an extraordinary situation. We are facing an act of God where we may even see a contraction".