Govt 'wrong' in defending 'catastrophic' mistakes: PC

New Delhi: P Chidambaram, addressing his first press meet after being released from jail on bail, did not waste any time in taking on the government on the state of the economy and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been "unusually silent" on the slump.

The former Finance minister also called the government "wrong, stubborn and mulish" in defending "catastrophic" mistakes. "The government is making mistakes. It is wrong. Let me repeat, the government is wrong and they are wrong because they are clueless," he said.

Turning to poetry and appearing emotional at certain times, the 74-year-old Congress veteran refused to speak on the INX Media case pending against him and focused mostly on the economy at his packed press conference at the AICC headquarters.

The government is unable to look for the obvious clues because it is "stubborn and mulish" in defending its "catastrophic mistakes" such as demonetisation, flawed GST, tax terrorism, regulatory overkill, protectionism, and centralised control of decision-making in the Prime Minister's Office, he alleged.

"He has left it to his ministers to indulge in bluff and bluster. The net result, as The Economist put it, is that the government has turned out to be an 'incompetent manager' of the economy," he said.

Taking a swipe at the government, Chidambaram said it is calling the present slowdown "cyclical"; thank god it has not called it seasonal, he added.

"It is 'structural' and the government has no solutions or reforms that would address the structural problems," he said.

Asserting that the government "is in denial" over the state of the economy, Chidambaram pointed out that rural consumption is down according to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) as are rural wages and producer prices, especially for the farmers.

There is less demand among the people because they have less money and less appetite to consume due to uncertainty and fear, Chidambaram claimed.