India will become great by gulping Vitamin HPN: Ramesh

The Congress slammed the government on Tuesday over India's factory output shrinking to the lowest level in eight years, with senior leader Jairam Ramesh saying the country will become "great by gulping Vitamin HPN (hyper pseudo-nationalism)".

In signs of continuing weakness in the economy, India's factory output shrank to the lowest level in eight years as all three broad-based sectors of capital goods production, consumer durables, and infrastructure and construction goods contracted.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram took a swipe at the government with tweets on the recent official data.

He asked his family to tweet on his behalf: "To the 'Falling' and 'Rising' lists please add the following: Capital goods sector is falling, the mining sector is falling, the manufacturing sector is falling, electricity output is falling and consumer durables sector is falling."

"University fees are rising and pollution is rising, anaemia among men and women is rising," said the former finance minister, who is in jail INX Media money-laundering case.

Ramesh, in a dig at the government, tweeted: "Official data just released shows sharpest fall in industrial production in 8 years. Acche Din undoubtedly. But why bother? India will become great by gulping Vitamin HPN (hyper pseudo nationalism)."

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Shashi Tharoor also hit out at the government saying the fall in industrial production was "disastrous".

"We used to complain about a declining 'rate of growth' in industrial production, but this is an actual decline! Investor confidence is plummeting and so, sadly, is our economy," he said in a tweet.

Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also posted economic data and asked if these were "achche din".

The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) fell 4.3 per cent in September as compared to a contraction by 1.4 per cent in August 2019 and a growth of 4.6 per cent in factory output in the same month a year back, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed on Monday.