Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram took a fresh dig at the NDA government talking about the Budget 2018 presented by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on February 1.
In a series of tweets, the member of Rajya Sabha said that the Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian has been a good doctor since his appointment as the CEA in October 2014. But, the NDA government has been a terrible patient.
Laying out the difference between the Economic Survey and the Budget, here is what the Congress leader tweeted:
“I regarded the CEA as the doctor-in-residence to check his patient’s health every day and, in case the patient fell ill, to prescribe the course of treatment and the medicines. A bad patient will not take the medicines, and make his own diagnosis and prescription.”
2. Dr Arvind Subramanian has been a good doctor since his appointment as the CEA in October 2014. The NDA government has been a terrible patient.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) February 4, 2018
“The Budget was the occasion to outline the reforms and set a schedule. Instead, what we got was Elizabethan prose about “an ambitious reform agenda under the rubric of an Enhanced Access and Service Excellence (EASE) programme.”
4. The ES emphasised the four ‘R’s (Recognition, Resolution, Recapitalisation and Reforms) and pointed out that, although the first three had been done, banking reforms had not been undertaken.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) February 4, 2018
“A modest rise in exports in recent months may have made the government complacent. There are no grounds for complacency because merchandise exports have barely come back to the level of a few years ago”
6. The ES pointed out that “It is striking that the Centre’s tax-GDP ratio is no higher than it was in the 1980s” and observed, after demonetisation and the GST, it would be interesting to see how good the collections have been and also the projections for the next year.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) February 4, 2018
7. In the Budget, the Finance Minister did not even acknowledge the worrying situation of savings and investments!
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) February 4, 2018
8. The government continues to be in denial. It denies the objective situation in the economy. It denies farm distress. It denies joblessness. It denies the arguments of the Opposition. Now, it denies even the diagnosis and the prescription of the doctor it engaged in 2014.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) February 4, 2018