Impact of India’s high economic growth not seen on the ground: Chidambaram in Parliament

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday tore into the Union government’s campaign on high economic growth by observing that such a “scintillating growth” neither translated to job creation nor was able to lower the food and household item prices for common people.

Despite growing at the fastest rate in the world with the largest FDI inflows, the impact of the growth was not seen on the ground, the former Finance Minister said, participating in a debate in the Rajya Sabha.

“Who is this government working for? Is it for the poor or are the policies skewed to favour the rich,” he said. Other senior opposition leaders like Derek O’Brien and Manoj Jha also raised questions why the economic growth was translating into benefits for the poor.

Chidambaram said India's worker population rate (the number of workers to population) was 46% of which nearly 57% are self-employed.

“Effectively this means only 23% of the people work. This is more or less constant in the last nine and half years of the BJP government. Why, I ask, if we have such scintillating growth, why is this number not improving?" he said.

Citing official data, he said unemployment was over 23% among the 15-24 year group and 42% among those with a graduate degree having an age of less than 25 years. Unemployment is 23% among graduates in the age bracket of 25-29 years and 10% in the 30-34 year group.

“Among the graduates, one out of four remain unemployed and the number of regular-wage employees declined from 24% to 21%,” he said.

On price rise, he said even today the CPI inflation was above the tolerance limit of 4-6% and food inflation is 9.2%. "What does the combination of high unemployment and high prices mean? It means curtailing domestic consumption," Chidambaram asserted.

Noting that the net financial assets of households have plummeted, he said, "People are consuming less and borrowing more. They are liquidating their household assets and savings and their net financial savings has come down to a historical 50-year low of 5.1%."

Opening the debate, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'brien said the Centre should spare a thought for the marginalised and vulnerable rather than focussing solely on the stock market.

"If you look at the economy through the eyes of any family anywhere in the country, what will those eyes tell you? Those eyes will tell you that from 2014 to 2023, the price of rice has gone up by 56%, the price of wheat by 59%, milk by 61%, tomatoes by 115% and tur dal by 120%," he said.