PM's entire focus not on reducing inflation but on data manipulation, propaganda: Congress

Jairam Ramesh said price rise has been particularly high for food, fuel, and items of daily use, and it has placed a heavy burden on India's working class and middle class families.

New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's entire focus is not on reducing inflation, but on showing low inflation figures, and said a government that is focused on propaganda and data manipulation is not one that can be relied on to work for people's welfare.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said India has seen ten years of a "Modi-made inflation", created and fostered by the government's poor policy-making.

"The prime minister's entire focus is not on reducing inflation, but on showing low inflation figures. The government is now concertedly attempting to manipulate the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WP1) figures to show inflation as being under control, even as the ground reality is that the common man is facing non-stop price rise," Ramesh said in a statement.

He said price rise has been particularly high for food, fuel, and items of daily use, and it has placed a heavy burden on India's working class and middle class families. Despite the fall in crude oil prices in the global market, petrol and diesel remain expensive in India, which has increased the cost of transportation and other services, the Congress general secretary said.

"Food inflation has been another concern that has underlined the high levels of overall inflation. Accordingly, the government is now preparing to reduce the weightage of food items in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This is an attempt to hide the real impact of inflation, and an indication of the government's priorities of massaging inconvenient data rather than acting on it," he said.

"This attempted change in the CPI weightage is not only dishonest, it will also impact the incomes of an estimated 3-4 crore people, including government and semi- government employees," he said.

Ramesh pointed out that dearness allowance and salary increments have already fallen compared to the UPA government - now they are set to fall further.

"This is not a new development. The Modi government has repeatedly tried to mislead the country by juggling data. Earlier, when the BJP government started lagging behind the UPA government in GDP growth rate, an attempt was made to artificially increase the growth rate by changing the base year," he said, adding the same game was played in employment promises.

The BJP initially promised two crore youth jobs every year and when unemployment started increasing, surveys and reports were stopped or modified to hide this reality, he alleged.

Ramesh said the employment criteria was changed to include self-employment and those who have taken on Mudra loans or temporary jobs.

"EPFO data was used to make claims on record job growth - though in reality the data measures EPFO enrolment alone," he said.

Similarly, rather than set a transparent poverty line, the Government created a deceptive multi-dimensional poverty index to claim massive reductions in poverty, Ramesh said.

In the meantime, the poor have faced difficulty in taking advantage of welfare schemes due to this jugglery, he said.

"Despite the fall in crude oil prices internationally, the prices of petrol, diesel and LPG were increased. During the UPA government, information on comparison of India's fuel prices with neighbouring countries was made public on the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) website. In keeping with its record of opacity, the government removed the data from its website," he said.

Instead, it has allowed record profit-making by oil and gas companies, apart from extorting revenue of Rs 36 lakh crore from the public through taxes on petrol and diesel, the former Union minister said.

"A government that is focused on propaganda and data manipulation is not one that can be relied on to work for the people's welfare. Such is the case with this government," Ramesh said.