BJP slams govt: Country on brink of bankruptcy

Rebranding the "Hindu rate of growth" as the "Nehruvian rate of growth", senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley Saturday said the NDA regime had taken the country's economic growth from four per cent to more than eight per cent while Nehru's Congress has again brought the country to the brink of "bankruptcy".

The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha was participating in a discussion on the BJP's economic resolution before it was adopted at the party's National Council meeting here.

The resolution, moved by MP Prakash Javadekar, read, "NDA started with four per cent of GDP growth and took the country on the 8+ per cent growth trajectory, while UPA inherited 8+ per cent GDP growth rate and brought it down to nearly four per cent. The approach of the UPA government to poverty alleviation is entitlement and not empowerment. While empowerment is a productive and sustaining strategy, entitlement makes people permanently dependent on the government." Describing inflation and corruption as "hallmarks of the UPA government", it said that "every economic macro-parameter has steadily declined" during the UPA regime.

During the discussion, in which Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and Murli Manohar Joshi also participated, Jaitley said the "UPA will leave power by bringing economy to 4.5-5 per cent of growth rate" which is close to the famed 'Hindu rate of growth' that will fail to meet the rising aspirational class.

"It will be inappropriate for the BJP to accept it because it was a Nehruvian rate of growth which attracted currency at global level by the term Hindu rate of growth," Jaitley said, while adding that BJP had given UPA a sound platform — eight per cent of growth rate with inflation under control — to take off.

"Instead of working towards a 10 per cent growth rate with 5 per cent inflation rate, in its nine-year tenure the UPA has achieved the exact opposite — a 10 per cent inflation rate and a 5 per cent growth rate. Even by conservative estimates, the mess of economic mismanagement under the Congress-led UPA government has taken the country many decades backward," the resolution said.

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