Saffron dissent: Ex-FM Yashwant Sinha flays govt's economic mess'

New Delhi: Veteran BJP leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha on Wednesday mounted a scathing attack on his own government’s economic performance in an opinion article published in an English daily. It was titled, I need to speak up now.

In the article, Mr Sinha said flayed finance minister Arun Jaitley for the economic “mess” in the country, and wrote, “I shall be failing in my national duty if I did not speak up even now against the mess the finance minister has made of the economy. I am also convinced that what I am going to say reflects the sentiments of a large number of people in the BJP and elsewhere who are not speaking up out of fear.”  

Predicting that the economy’s revival by next Lok Sabha elections “appears highly unlikely”, he wrote that “a hard landing is inevitable.”

Union home minister Rajnath Singh tried to downplay Mr Sinha’s scathing attack. “The whole world admits that India is the fastest growing economy in the world. No one should forget this fact. In the matter of economy, in the international arena, India’s credibility has been established,” he said.

In his brutal article, Mr Sinha wrote, “The Prime Minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters… Bluff and bluster is fine for the hustings, it evaporates in the face of reality.”

A gleeful Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, while sharing Mr Sinha’s critique, tweeted, “Ladies & Gentlemen, this is your copilot & FM speaking. Plz fasten your seat belts & take brace position. The wings have fallen off our plane.”

Mr Sinha’s attack came a day after BJP MP Varun Gandhi questioned the government’s policy on Rohingya refugees in a newspaper column.

Mr Sinha is not the only saffron leader to express concern over the state of the economy. Earlier, heavyweights like S. Gurumurthy, co-convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, and party MP Subramanian Swamy had also questioned the government’s economic policies.

Trying to defend the government, railway minister Piyush Goel said that “each one is entitled to his own understanding of the situation,” but “India’s economy is today a strong economy.”

The Congress fielded former finance minister P. Chidambaram to build on Mr Sinha’s charges on Wednesday. He began by thanking Mr Sinha for speaking “truth to power”. “Yashwant Sinha speaks truth to power. Will power now admit the truth that economy is sinking?” he tweeted.

Targeting the government, Mr Chidambaram claimed that the Modi-sarkar was completely “clueless about what is causing the economic decline” and then asked, “How long will the government hide behind the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and the slogans of the party?”

Seething Jaitley loyalists claimed that “it was Mr Sinha’s frustration speaking” when he took pot-shots at him for losing Lok Sabha polls and yet managing to corner the coveted berth.

“His (Jaitley’s) losing Lok Sabha election from Amritsar was not allowed to come in the way of this appointment. One may recall that in similar circumstances Atal Bihari Vajpayee had refused to appoint Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan, two of his closest colleagues in the party, to his Cabinet in 1998,” Mr Sinha wrote in his article.  

Both Mr Chidambaram and Mr Sinha echoed similar sentiments on the issue of the new Economic Advisory Council.

Mr Sinha wrote, “The only new thing is the reconstituted Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister. Like the five Pandavas, they are expected to win the new Mahabharat war for us.”

Mr Chidambaram likened the Economic Advisory Council to “putting band aid on several broken limbs.”

The BJP is also livid at Mr Sinha’s description of the Modi government as “raid raj”.

Mr Sinha wrote, “We protested against raid raj when we were in Opposition. Today it has become the order of the day… Post demonetisation, the income tax department has been charged with the responsibility of investigating lakhs of cases involving the fate of millions of people. The Enforcement Directorate and the CBI also have their plates full. Instilling fear in the minds of the people is the name of the new game.”