Sensing unhappiness among people, especially the trading community, over the Narendra Modi government's decision to demonetise high value notes as well as the manner in which Goods and Services Tax has been rolled out, the Congress is upping the ante on the issues in the run up to the assembly elections in Gujarat.
The Congress has decided to observe the first anniversary of demonetisation as 'black day'. Party vice president Rahul Gandhi will be in Surat, which is a hub of trade in diamonds and textiles, on November 8.
Rahul has been speaking about how demonetisation harmed businesses, and how GST, which he has termed 'Gabbar Singh Tax', came as a death blow to them. The assessment of the Congress is that traders are incensed over the damage done to their business by GST, and Rahul meeting the trading community on the first anniversary of demonetisation would send out a strong message to the Gujarati businessmen.
The Congress vice president was in Surat from November 1 to 3, during which he harped on how demonetisation and GST had harmed small and medium businesses. “Big companies do not bring in employment. It is small businesses that bring business. Lakhs of jobs are generated because of the textile and diamond markets of Surat. Due to demonetisation and GST, they suffered badly. It is an attack on small businesses,” Rahul said at a rally in Surat.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has emerged as one of the most authoritatively critical voices on demonetisation and also the manner in which the GST has been rolled out, will hold a press conference in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.
The usually reticent Manmohan has been at the forefront of the Congress's assault on the Narendra Modi government on the twin issues. The party believes that his credentials as a respected economist, under whose tenure as finance minister the economic reforms were ushered in, give his criticism of the Modi regime's decisions on the economy front a lot of credibility. He had in parliament described demonetisation as “organised loot and legalised plunder”. And on later occasions, he predicted a damaging effect of the move on the country's GDP.
Manmohan was one of the main participants in a meeting of party office bearers called recently by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to fine-tune the party's protests against the government on demonetisation and GST.
