The present rulers are trying to add one way to arrest population in the form of ‘Check by Governance’ causing suicides of farmers and other common people owing to the economic policies and prescription of the Government.
The Reserve Bank of India has released its annual report showing that as much as 98.96 per cent of the demonetised currency had returned to the central bank. The estimate of the returnable demonetised currency notes was Rs 15.44 lakh crores of which Rs 15.28 lakh crores has returned. This has proved that the country wide exercise of DeMon has totally failed to curb black money. Further it has hampered the economic growth of the country, as reflected in the GDP growth at 5.7 per cent between April-June (2017-18) which is at the slowest pace recorded in 13 quarters since the National Democratic Alliance government, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party assumed office in May 2014.
The Finance Minister has accepted and attributed the dismal performance on GDP by having gone down of manufacturing sector to GST impact.
Manufacturing sector would be promising only if the cash flow is uninterrupted. The shockwaves emanated due to the demonetisation exercise has hindered the sector very much. The FM has acknowledged for the first time that the growth figures are certainly ‘a matter of concern’. The slowdown has happened not all of a sudden but it has been persisting since the financial year, 2016-17. During the four quarters of the year, GDP growth has slowed down from 7.9, 7.5 to 7.0 and further to 6.1 per cent. For the quarter April-June 2017-18 it has come down to 5.7 per cent. All these are in monetary terms. On the other side, how much sufferings had the public experienced at the time of the demonetisation exercise to spend their hard earned money for their timely and urgent need! The long standing queues in front of the bank branches to deposit the demonetised currency notes vindicated the unproductive exercise of demonetisation, with the rhetoric of breaking ‘the grip of corruption and black money’. Nothing has happened as predicted by the rulers at the Centre. It only witnessed the sacrifice of life of about 100 people, who stood in the queues to exchange their demonetised currency notes. The miseries of the common mass were hard to fathom. The comment of the former Prime Minister – Economist on demonetisation as ‘monumental disaster’ has been proved by the latest functional parameters of the economy of the country.
The agriculture sector has already been hampered due to faulty policy formulation and the follow-up prescriptions of the government. The suicidal deaths of farmers owing to indebtedness, caused by the lack of infrastructure have become a routine affair. The agitating farmers of Tamil Nadu at New Delhi at the very nose of Central Governance are not bestowed with due audience and have not solved their perennial problems. Now the growth of the next major sector, of the economy viz. manufacturing has started to slow down due to faulty, emotive and rhetoric announcements of the Union Government and the adamant implementation.
The present NDA rule, prior to coming to power, proclaimed that the bringing back of black money from abroad would be distributed at the rate of Rs. 15 lakhs per citizen. The demonetisation measures were implemented to curb corruption and black money. Farmers were promised minimum support price for their produces would be fixed. Not having kept up the past promises, the rulers have changed their stand that the farmer’s income would be doubled in 2020. The rulers are shifting the goal posts. The prescriptions are changing time and now. The disease is devoid of its diagnosis. The Malthusian theory of population says that the natural check in the form of famines and calamities would be one of the ways to curtail the population growth. The present rulers are trying to add one way to arrest population in the form of ‘Check by Governance’ causing suicides of farmers and other common people owing to the economic policies and prescription of the Government.
Let the Government admit their own wrong decisions and stop playing the blame game with the tactic of shifting the goal posts!