Demonetisation hastily implemented GST damaged economy: Rahul Gandhi

WASHINGTON: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi today criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic policies, accusing him of causing "tremendous damage" to India's economy with "reckless and dangerous" decisions like demonetisation and "hastily-applied" GST.

Gandhi, 47, who arrived in the US yesterday on a two-week-long tour, addressed students at the University of California, Berkeley, to reflect on contemporary India and the path forward for the world's largest democracy.He said the November 8 demonetisation decision was taken without asking the Chief Economic Advisor and Parliament, which caused tremendous damage to the economy.

Demonetisation, he alleged, imposed a devastating cost on India."Ignoring India's tremendous institutional knowledge and taking such decisions is reckless and dangerous," he charged.He said 30,000 new youngsters were joining the job market every single day and the government was only creating 500 jobs a day."This does not include the massive pool of already employed youngsters," he said.

"The decline in economic growth today is leading to an upsurge of anger in the country. The government's economic policies demonetisation and hastily-applied GST have caused tremendous damage," he alleged.Goods and Services Tax, a tax regime which combines all of India's states and union territories into a single market, was launched at midnight on June 30.Gandhi also accused the government of wiping out millions by demonetisation.

"Millions of small businesses were simply wiped out as a result of the demonetisation, farmers and many who use cash were hit extremely hard. Agriculture is in deep distress and farmers suicides have skyrocketed across the country."Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, had said the fallout of demonetisation was on predicted lines and the economy will benefit in medium and long term.

Jaitley's remarks came after the Reserve Bank of India said that 99 per cent of the demonetised currency came back into the system. Jaitley had also insisted that money getting deposited in banks does not mean that all of it is legitimate.But Gandhi described demonetisation "a completely selfinflicted wound" that caused approximately 2 per cent loss of the GDP.India, the Congress leader said, cannot afford to grow and create jobs at the current rate.

"If we continue at the current rate, if India cannot give the millions of people entering the job market employment, anger will increase and it has the potential to derail what has been built so far. That would be catastrophic for India and the world beyond," Gandhi warned.The Congress vice president said that the central challenge for the country today is creating jobs.

Noting that roughly 12 million young people join the Indian job market every year with nearly 90 per cent of them having a high school education or less, Gandhi said India, being a democratic country, cannot follow the Chinese model of coercion."Unlike China it has to create jobs in a democratic environment," he said, adding that India does not "want China's coercive" instruments."We cannot follow the model of massive factories controlled by a few," Gandhi said.