Rahul Gandhi accuses Modi government of destroying informal economy

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused the Narendra Modi government of destroying the informal sector that generates 90% jobs, in a bid to gain control over it and extort money.

“The informal sector has a lot of money which the government cannot touch. They want to break this sector and extort money from them,” the former Congress President said in a short video, the first of a series on the Indian economy.

He had earlier released a five-part series on Chinese incursions in Ladakh.

Rahul said the three decisions – “demonetisation, wrong GST and lockdown” were implemented as a plan to destroy the informal sector that had shielded India from the 2008 global financial crisis.

“Don’t think the lockdown was unplanned. Don’t think it was done at the last minute. The aim of these three decisions was to destroy the informal sector,” he said in a 3-minute 38-second video.

Rahul said the impact of this attack on the informal sector would be seen soon.

“The results will be that India won’t be able to produce jobs. Because the informal sector produces 90% of the jobs. Once the informal sector is destroyed, India won’t be able to produce jobs,” he said.

“You are being cheated and there is an attempt to turn you into slaves,” Rahul said, adding that there was a need to understand this attack and unite to fight against it.

He said the 2008 global financial crisis had affected all the big economies such as the US, Japan, China and European countries, but India had remained unaffected.

“India had a UPA government at that time. I went to the Prime Minister and asked him, Manmohan Singh ji, what is the reason that when the entire world has suffered an economic crisis India has remained unaffected,” the former Congress chief said.

“Manmohan Singh ji replied, Rahul if you want to understand India’s economy, you will have to understand that India has two economic structures. One is the formal economy and the other is the informal economy,” he added.