'Modi misleading people over GDP recovery; 3.6 crore turned jobless'
KOLKATA: Bengal Finance minister Amit Mitra on Sunday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for misleading people over the recovery of GDP, when 3.6 crore people have turned jobless in the country.
In the same breath, Mitra sought the Prime Minister's reply as the "country wants answers to the questions" raised on high rate of unemployment and "misleading" facts on the country's economic situation "suppressing the plight of 36 million Indians".
"Modi Ji, are you even aware that 3.6 CRORES (36 million) people are JOBLESS as of August 2021? No income, No livelihood, No hope!" Mitra tweeted.
He further tweeted: "Yet, your 'spin doctors' drum-beat on a misleading 'recovery', suppressing the plight of 36 million Indians. PM ji, desh JAWAB MANG RAHI HAI".
The Centre had stated that the country's economic growth surged to 20.1 per cent in the April-June quarter of the current fiscal.
Mitra's letter comes a couple of days after he wrote to the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stating that "yet paradoxically, your government's propagandists are gloating over the 1st Quarter growth of 2021-22, which economists have found utterly misleading and other experts have called it a mirage".
Urging the Centre to restrain their "spin doctors so that the reality is stated with utter objectivity", the Bengal Finance minister also stated in his letter: "I now return to the misplaced euphoria among your government's spokespersons on the GDP/GVA (gross value added) growth in Quarter-1 of this financial year. I would like to point out that the growth of GVA in the Quarter-1 of this year represents a shortfall to the tune of 7.79 per cent compared to the Quarter 1 of 2019-20".
He had also stated: "The nation is shocked to find that in the last month (August, 2021), the unemployment rate has again shot up to 8.32 per cent (as per Gol data) which implies that 3.6 crore people are jobless today...This is one-and-a half times the entire population of Australia."
