New Delhi: Gearing up for the 2019 general elections, the Congress party is soon going to release a state of the economy report on the four years of the Modi government which is likely to be titled “Four years wasted”.
The document would be released from about two weeks from now before the budget session reconvenes after its break. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former finance minister P. Chidambaram are likely to release the document, which is being prepared by the Research Cell of the Congress Party.
“We are going to come out with a document which will tell the real story behind the tall claims being made by the government on the economy front,” Rajiv Gowda, chairperson of the Research Cell of the Congress and National Spokesperson of the party told this newspaper.
It might be recalled that the party had released the first in the series of these reports called “The Real State of the Economy” in January last year. A member of the Research Cell said that this time the document would be released slightly late as they were waiting for the budget.
“We also wanted to take into account all the four years of the Modi rule,” Mr Gowda said. The document is likely to become the basis of the manifesto and the campaign plank on the economic front for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The Party would also come out with similar compilations on the problems in the front of Foreign Policy, Social Sector and other areas.
Formed just six months before, the Research Cell has been instrumental in framing a campaign strategy for the Gujarat polls where the party got the maximum seats in the last 20 years and claimed moral victory over the BJP. Providing the much needed backbone of the campaign trails, the Research Department would fan out to all states which go to polls this year and provide inputs on local intelligentsia and activists to find out the real issues plaguing the people. The Department, chaired by Mr Gowda a former Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, also provides the ammunition to Congress MPs to take on the Government in debates and interventions.
