‘Jumla Sarkar’: Congress slams Modi government’s track record

New Delhi: On the first anniversary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term in office, the Congress launched a stinging critique of the government’s performance with the party’s research department chief Rajeev Gowda, citing India’s rank of “105 out of 127” on the Global Hunger Index, claimed that 35.5 percent of Indian children are “stunted, 19.3 percent are wasted, and 32.1 percent are underweight”.

Gowda shared two documents -- ‘Ek Aur Baar Jumla Sarkar’ and ‘11 Saal, Jhoothe Vikaas Ke Vaade.’

Questioning the government’s claims on education and infrastructure, he claimed that while 700 Eklavya schools were announced, 300 remain non-functional. “Is it rocket science to run a school?” he asked. Similarly, he called the expansion of IITs and AIIMS “tokenism,” highlighting that 56 percent of faculty posts in premier institutions “remain vacant”.

Gowda also challenged the defence indigenisation narrative, pointing out that 40 percent of the listed items for localisation had “not yet been indigenised”. He criticised the slowing capital investment, with fixed capital formation dropping to an 11-year low of 32.4 percent in FY24, and noted that the PLI scheme has seen only 8 percent fund disbursal against the promised Rs 1.9 lakh crore.

He said: “Any economist will tell that if we grow below 8.5 percent a year, we are sacrificing the future of crores-and-crores of our youngsters because we will not have enough growth, and jobs and opportunities that are required to just provide the jobs that the great Jumla – 2 crore jobs per year, would be over to fulfil that and our growth is 6.5 per cent over the last year. This is the lowest rate after the Covid period.”