Stepping up his attack on the Modi government over the state of the economy, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Thursday that demonetisation had been an attack on India’s unorganised sector and a move to benefit only a group of billionaires. Releasing the second video in his series on the economy, Rahul said that the country will have to fight the attack together after recognising it. He also added that the decision to ban high value currency was an attack on the country’s poor, farmers, labourers and small shopkeepers.
Linking the decision of demonetisation to the negative growth rate of the GDP, Rahul said, “Demonetisation was an attack on India’s unorganised economy and we must recognise this attack. The entire country will have to fight against it together. On November 8, 2016, the Prime Minister announced demonetisation, making old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes useless, and the entire country stood in front of banks to deposit their money and savings.” He claimed that the move neither erased black money nor did the poor benefit from it. “So who got the benefit? The advantage was given to India’s biggest billionaires. How? The money that you had in your pockets, that you had in your homes, was taken away and used by the government to waive the debts of these people. Money from the common man’s pocket was used to pay for the debts of the rich — this was the objective of demonetisation,” the Congress MP added.
Taking further aim at the Modi government, he said, “The second goal of demonetisation aims to wipe out cash from the system, including from the informal or unorganised sector. The Prime Minister himself said he wanted a cashless India, but if there is a cashless India, the informal sector will be destroyed.” He claimed that the hidden agenda of demonetisation, which saw the scrapping of all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, was to “clear the ground”.
In the short video, which has become a new communication tool for him, Rahul said, “Our informal sector works on cash. Small shopkeepers and workers survive on cash. The second target of demonetisation was to take out money from the informal sector. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation that he wants a cashless India. If India goes cashless, small shopkeepers, farmers, and workers will be finished.”
This is the second video released by the Congress leader in a series of videos on the economic situation in the country. The first video was released on 31 August, in which he alleged that the BJP government has been attacking the informal sector over the past six years, and asserted that the aim of demonetisation, “wrong” Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the lockdown was to destroy this sector.
