NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Monday astonishingly blamed the former Reserve Bank of India Governor, Raghuram Rajan, for India’s current economic mess.
Speaking to ANI, Kumar controversially said, “It is a continuation of a trend of a declining growth, and why was this growth declining, it was declining because of the rising NPAs in the banking sector.
“When this (NDA) government came into office that figure was 4 lakh crore, it rose to 10.5 lakh crore by the middle of 2017 because under the previous RBI governor, Mr. Rajan, they had identified mechanisms to identify stressed and non-performing assets which is why the banks stopped giving credit to industries.”
#WATCH:Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar says, ‘Growth was declining due to former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s policies’ pic.twitter.com/wUIlKYsHcO
— ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2018
No sooner were his comments broadcast, Kumar began to face incessant ridicule by journalists and academics alike. Academician Ashok Swain asked, “Is Raghuram Rajan the New Nehru? These morons are really funny!” His comments were in reference to the current BJP government’s repeated attempts to blame India’s first prime minister for every malaise in the society and taking any responsibility for the economic mess during its tenure.
One Twitter user Vineet Katiyar wrote, “His statement reflect excessive use of “Crack Cocaine”.” Another user tweeted sarcastically, “I think the slow growth is for mughal invasion. Raghuram rajan came much later. BJP chose the way on guy.”
Many users contended that Kumar’s comments were admission of failure on the part of the Centre’s Narendra Modi government on economic front. This, they pointed out, was the first ever confession by the government that the Indian economy was in utter mess.
Kumar’s comments came just days after the RBI confirmed that Modi’s demonetisation was a grand failure as 99.3% currency in circulation before 8 November 2016 had returned to banks. Modi, in his shocking announcement of note ban on 8 November 2016, had said that the decision to declare 86% of the currency illegal was to curb the black money floating in the market.
