The Congress leader said the Economic Survey has flagged India’s “slow pace of investment in M&E and IP Products” affecting manufacturing growth and formal employment growth.Even research and development, essential for long-term growth and investment, has flat-lined, he claimed.It is lower as a percentage of the GDP today than in 2014, when Manmohan Singh left the Prime Minister’s Office, Ramesh said.”Recall that CMIE data shows private investment plans at their lowest level in 20 years,” he added. Similarly, the Economic Survey is forced to acknowledge the unemployment situation — “the greatest failure of the Modi government” — Ramesh said.”The Economic Survey has flagged that we must create nearly 80 lakh jobs each year for the next 20 years. The survey also points out that ‘manufacturing sector employment creation has been subdued in the past decade’, despite the hype and hoopla of Make in India,” he said.”What is not said, however, is that the Union government’s current strategy is entirely reliant on data manipulation and ‘pakodanomics’.Achieving the 80 lakh jobs target requires a decided shift in the government’s larger economic strategy,” the Congress leader said.The Economic Survey would not be a document of the Narendra Modi government without some completely ridiculous lies, he said.”The most shameful of them all, however, is the astounding claim that ‘abject poverty has all but been eliminated’. A reality check: half of all Indians cannot even afford three meals per day. One in three children is stunted and one in four children is not fully immunised, according to the NFHS-5,” Ramesh added.Approximately two-thirds of the country is reliant on free foodgrains provided under the National Food Security Act, he pointed out.”India is in its most precarious and difficult economic situation in many years. The Economic Survey might present a cherry-picked view of the economy, but we hope that tomorrow’s Budget faces up to the country’s realities,” the Congress leader said.”If the Finance Ministry is still looking for ideas, we would point them to the Indian National Congress’s Nyay Patra 2024.The need of the hour is a right to apprenticeship, protections for gig workers and unorganised sector workers, minimum wage hikes to Rs 400 per day, an end to tax terrorism and an expansion of social-protection schemes like anganwadis,” he said
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