The war of words over the economy between Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does not seem to be ending. This time, it was the turn of Sitharaman to hit back. “I respect Dr. Manmohan Singh for telling me not to do the blame game. But recalling when and what went wrong during a certain period is absolutely necessary to put it in context, now that I’m being charged that there’s no narrative at all about the economy,” she told reporters in the US. Earlier, Singh had said that the government was “obsessed” with pinning blame on opponents and that it should stop this since it had spent over five years in office. His comments were in response to a previous attack by Sitharaman that Singh, along with former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, presided over the “worst” phase of the banking sector. That remark was in response to a comment by Rajan.
While Sitharaman and Singh may have political reasons to attack each other, what deserves greater attention is how the economy’s growth momentum is to be restored. Investment has languished for years, while consumer demand has turned sluggish in recent quarters. Rural household consumption, according to a report by research firm Nielsen, slumped to a seven-year low in the second quarter of this fiscal. There are various other distress signals.
Focused action is needed if the slowdown is to be reversed. Shoring up demand seems like the need of the hour. This could be done by putting money in people’s hands one way or another. Solutions need to be debated, and for that, we all need to look ahead, rather than at the past.
