Biggest Economic blunder in India's history.
Manmohan Singh A man who witnessed the economic failures of Indira & Rajiv Gandhi always has been Congress's hope to revive the economy. He himself was the PM for 10 long years, sitting on a pile of scams.
Let's see chronology
1972-1976 Chief Economic Advisor of India
1982-1985 RBI Governor
1985-1987 Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission
1991-1996 Finance Minister of India
2004-2014 Prime Minister of India
Quite an illustrious career, but we need to see what did India achieve.
His first stint as Chief Economic Advisor came in 1972 after the big announcement of
"Garibi hatao". Probably these 4 years from 1972-76 were the worst in India's history Indira took draconian decisions like Bank Nationalisation, Insurance Privatisation, Privy purse abolition,
Income tax 98%
1973 Inflation 22%
1974 Inflation 20%
1975 Inflation 25%
A conspiracy theory says, Indira had imposed an Emergency to hide her economic failures, there were huge unemployment, farm crises, and laborers were worst affected, chaos in India. Even in the pandemic, we are doing better than Indira. After the Emergency was imposed the economy came to halt, market and industry worst affected and the inflow of investment had stopped One may argue, this was Indira's failure, but then you have to ask, what was the Chief Economic Advisor of India doing? Just watching the disaster.
1982-1985 RBI Governor
India desperately needed economic reforms like liberalization & getting the private sector rolling. But Congress was opposed to the private sector which caused an economic slowdown & made tough for reviving the economy. RBI didn't take any decision to attract investment.
1985-1987 Dy. Chairman of Planning Commission
Financial advisor to Rajiv Gandhi, they decided to implement some fancy reforms to revive the GDP growth, make India an attractive investment destination for foreign players. Looks ambitious, but the question is, Did it work? Ambitious economic policies which look fancy from the outside, led to a total economic collapse by 1989. The growth rate was planned for 5%, exceeded to 6% p.a but the fiscal deficit was 7% of GDP which led to total collapse by 1991. Yes, Manmohan was equally responsible along with Rajiv. The fancy economic policies and the so-called technological revolution of Rajiv Gandhi like computers, television, radio, etc led to huge imports from foreign countries & created a huge trade account deficit. This should have been planned in a better way to avoid an economic crisis.
1991 Finance Minister of India
Manmohan is often described as a hero of economic reforms and liberalization of the economy. Pliable media has hundreds of articles but no one told u that IMF gave the loan under certain conditions like liberalization & the list as highlighted below In one of my old tweet, I had mentioned that India's GDP in 1990 was $320 billion which grew to $384 billion by 1996. Whereas in the same period China grew from $360 billion to $864 billion.
This was the first biggest battle lost to China and we never recovered thereafter.
Btwn the debate of who should get credit for 1991 economic liberalization, whether its IMF or Manmohan, here is a third person who is asking for credit, which is his fav task I think we should give him credit (for the sake of giving)
2004 Prime Minister of India
We know how failed PM he was, let's not go into detail but I would like to highlight a few points which are twisted by pliable media. "GDP growth rate of 2009 to 2011 makes him the best PM with a faster growth rate.2008 to 2011 check India vs China.There was a huge gap between India and China, two emerging countries were growing, but China was flying, in 2008 when the recession had hit, India down to 3% China grew at 10%. This is shocking, coz Congress said the world economy was affected then why China was not affected.
Now comes the golden period of India wid 8.5% growth, often these figures are compared with current Modi gov and you can still see that China was growing beyond 11% My assumption says wealthy ppl from West were investing in Asia, max investment went to China, India lagging behind.
By 2016, under the regime of Chaiwala & Jaitley Ji, the tables were turned and now India has surpassed China in GDP growth rate, something which Congress couldn't achieve for the last 30 years under the guidance of great economist Manmohan Since then its neck to neck between India & China. Why India failed to achieve its economic objectives from 2004 to 2014, here is the list of scams that shook the country and created a negative perception and rating of India in western countries.
Some say Manmohan was clean, then why was he watching the financial assault.
Finally, I will conclude this by echoing the same words, name one significant financial reform which was undertaken in Manmohan's era as PM or FM of India Manmohan Singh as an economist is highly overrated by the Left ecosystem & the pliable media.
See for yourself & decide.
Comments