The Narendra Modi government on Thursday tabled the much-talked-about white paper in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, detailing the “political misadventures and frauds” under the 10-year tenure of the Congress-led UPA government and how the NDA has set out to change it.
During her Interim Budget speech, Sitharaman stated that the government would publish a white paper on the economy detailing the economic mismanagement during the ten years of UPA rule until 2014. The NDA government overcame the crisis of those years, and the economy was put on hold. firmly on a high sustainable growth path with all-round development, Sitharaman said.
“The UPA government’s decade of rule (or its absence) was marked by political misadventures and scams such as non-transparent auction of public resources (coal and telecom spectrum), the specter of retrospective taxation, unsustainable demand stimulus and ill-targeted subsidies and reckless banking sector lending with a tinge of favoritism etc,” the report claimed.
In a detailed report, the Finance Ministry claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inherited a fragile economy bedeviled by economic mismanagement and financial indiscipline amid widespread corruption.
“Our government refrained from publishing a white paper on the bad state of affairs at the time. That would have given a negative narrative and shaken the confidence of everyone, including investors,” the report says.
Highlights from the white paper:
- The UPA Government inherited a healthy economy ready for more reforms, but made it a non-performer in its ten years.
- Ironically, the UPA leadership, which rarely fails to take credit for the 1991 reforms, abandoned them after coming to power in 2004.
- Even as the country stood on the verge of emerging as a powerful economy, little was done by the UPA government to build on the strong foundation laid by the previous NDA government.
- Economy grew rapidly between 2004 and 2008 due to the lagged effects of the NDA government’s reforms and favorable global conditions. However, the UPA government took credit for the high growth but did little to consolidate it.
- UPA government, in its quest to maintain high economic growth by any means after the global financial crisis of 2008, seriously undermined the macroeconomic fundamentals.
- High fiscal deficits for six years between FY09 and FY14 heaped misery on ordinary and poorer households. Inflation ran rampant between 2009 and 2014 and the common man bore the brunt
- Banking crisis was one of the most important and infamous legacies of the UPA government.
- Under the UPA government, foreign exchange reserves declined from about $294 billion in July 2011 to about $256 billion in August 2013.
- Under the UPA government, public finances were brought to a perilous state
- Poor strategy planning and execution also resulted in large unspent funds for many social sector schemes during the UPA years, which in turn crippled the effectiveness of the government’s schemes.
- The government’s prioritization of unproductive spending meant that significant funds were allocated to consumption rather than productive investment.
- The coal scam shook the conscience of the nation in 2014
- India’s telecom sector lost a precious decade to the 2G scam and political paralysis.
- While investors around the world sought ease of doing business, the UPA government provided political uncertainty and hostility.
- The discouraging investment climate under the UPA government led to domestic investors moving abroad.
- Time and again, there was a crisis of leadership in the UPA government. It appeared in full public glare in the shameful public tearing down of an ordinance issued by the government.
- The economic mismanagement stifled the growth potential and India became a “fragile” economy.
- We continue to take measures to unearth black money and discourage it.
- Since the time our government assumed power in 2014, the Indian economy has undergone many structural reforms that have strengthened the macroeconomic fundamentals of the economy.
- The government has undertaken various reforms to restore and strengthen the potential of the economy by creating a business-friendly environment, improving ease of living, and strengthening governance systems and processes. This led to a great decline in political uncertainty in India, which peaked under the UPA Government.