Govt 'stealing' women's mangalsutras : Congress raps BJP for sharp rise in gold loans

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that people are defaulting on at least 30 per cent of gold loans and claimed women are losing their gold, including mangalsutras.

New Delhi: Congress on Wednesday accused the Modi government of having no solutions to the economic turmoil in the country and its “rampant” cronyism, “erratic” policymaking and “warped” priorities have earned it the dubious distinction of being the only government in independent India to “steal mangalsutras” from women.

Party president Mallikarjun Kharge cited “seven indicators” that illustrated the “extent of mess” in the lives of ordinary Indians and said there has been a 50 per cent increase in gold loans and 30 per cent jump in gold loan NPAs while the total value of goods and services purchased by households has slowed down in the last eight quarters and has not recovered to pre-Covid levels.

He said wages grew at a compound annual rate of just 0.8 per cent in the engineering, manufacturing, process, and infrastructure (EMPI) sectors in the past 5 years while food inflation has averaged 7.1 per cent over the last eight quarters. Indirect taxation in the form of GST on essential items is depleting Household Savings which are at a 50-year low, he posted on 'X'.

Household financial liabilities are now 6.4 per cent of GDP, the highest in decades, while the rupee has hit all-time low, forcing foreign fund outflows and loss to small investors worth lakhs of crores, he said, besides referring to the car sales growth plunging to a four -year low.

“The Modi government has no solution for the economic turmoil it has created...Narendra Modi-ji, your annual 'New Year Resolutions' have been nothing short of 'jumlas' destroying the lives of every citizen,” he said.

Referring to Modi’s Lok Sabha campaign speeches where he accused the Congress of snatching ‘mangalsutras’ through redistribution of wealth, party General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said when families default on gold loans, they often lose the underlying gold asset – in most cases, the woman’s jewellery, including the ‘mangalsutra’.

“The Modi government’s rampant cronyism, erratic policymaking, and warped priorities have earned it the dubious distinction of being the only Government in the history of Independent India to steal mangalsutras from women,” he said.

An estimated Rs three lakh crore in gold loans have been taken out by Indian families and are outstanding as of today and it emerges that with rising indebtedness and a slowing economy, families are increasingly defaulting on these gold loans, he said.

The proportion of gold loan NPAs rose 30 per cent from Rs 5,149 crore to Rs 6,696 crore in the three months between March and June 2024, he said adding, when Modi was “scaremongering about some imagined plot to steal mangalsutras”, the Congress had raised the issue of the rapid rise in gold loans.

He recalled that these are formal sector gold loans while there is no estimate of how many families have taken recourse to the informal sector.