21/03/2023

PM Modi ‘misled the country’ by saying that the fight against COVID-19 pandemic would be won in 21 days, the former Congress president says in his video series on Indian economy.

In the fourth and final part of the video series on Indian economy, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi misled the country by saying that the fight against COVID-19 pandemic would be won in 21 days, instead in those 21 days the backbone of the unorganised sector was broken.
The unplanned lockdown which was imposed without prior notice was the third attack on the unorganised sector, he said. In the earlier parts of this series, he listed out demonetisation and faulty implementation of the GST as the other reasons that led to a collapse of the unorganised sector.
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The poor, those working in small and medium businesses, are daily wage earners. They eat with what they earn each day. When you announced a lockdown without a notice, you attacked them. The Prime Minister said the fight will be for 21 days, the backbone of the unorganised sector broke in 21 days, Mr. Gandhi said.
He said that the government did not heed to the Congress partys repeated advice that there was a crying need to implement a cash transfer scheme on the lines of NYAY to help the poor.
We suggested that for small and medium businesses, you should prepare a package. They need to be saved. Without this money, they will not be able to survive, but the government did nothing. Instead, the government waived off taxes worth lakhs of crores of the richest 15-20 people, he added.
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Mr. Gandhi said that the lockdown was not an attack on the novel coronavirus. It was an attack on the poor of India. It was an attack on the future of our youth. The lockdown was an attack on labourers, farmers and small shopkeepers. It was an attack on our unorganised sector, he added.