The Narendra Modi government on Thursday came up with ‘White Paper’ on India’s economy and presented a comparative analysis on how it performed between 2004-14 during the Congress-led UPA rule and the decade under the the BJP-led NDA.
In the ‘White Paper’, the government claimed that the UPA government had inherited a healthy economy but made it non-performing in the 10 years of its rule.
“In 2004, when the UPA government began its term, the economy was growing at 8 per cent (with industry and services sector growth above 7 per cent each and a resuscitating agriculture sector growth above 9 per cent in FY04) amidst a benign world economic environment,” read the White Paper tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament.
However, the ‘White Paper’ said, when the Congress government was ousted from power in 2014, it left behind “an unenviable legacy of a structurally weaker economy and a pervasive atmosphere of despondency”.
It further claimed that when the BJP-led NDA government took over in 2014, it “recognized the urgent need to revamp and overhaul systems and processes”.
The reforms, it said, that were undertaken during the Narendra Modi government pushed back the country’s economy from the league of “fragile five” to the “top five”.
Comparing the two seprate decades of UPA and NDA rules, it further said, “Then, we had 2G scam; now, we have extensive coverage of the population under 4G with the lowest rates and the world’s fastest rollout of 5G in 2023.”
“Then, we had ‘policy-paralysis’; infrastructure was not a priority; now, the wheels of the virtuous cycle of ‘investment, growth, employment and entrepreneurship, and savings’ leading to more investments and productivity has been set into fast motion,” it claimed.
Earlier in the day, the Congress party had brought a ‘Black Paper’ to counter the Modi’s government’s ‘White Paper’.
In the ‘Black Paper’, the Congress termed the 10-year rule of the Modi government ‘Anyay Kaal’ and highlighted the issue of rising petrol and diesel prices, unemployment, inflation amog others.