Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, at an event on Monday, said that it is not an “arithmetic inevitability” but the efforts that the government has put that will propel India into the spot of third-largest economy. She also said that India needs a stable government and that it needs growth. The period of 10 years before 2014 was a completely “lost decade”, she said.
“Nothing grows automatically, it is effort which makes it grow,” said Sitharaman, referring to P Chidambaram’s comment that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is turning an “arithmetic inevitably into a guarantee”. The finance minister was speaking at the Viksit Bharat Ambassador Campus Dialogue at Gitam University in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The event was attended by students, professionals and entrepreneurs.
Her remarks come as a response to Chidambaram who had said that India is poised to become the third-largest economy in the world irrespective of who becomes the prime minister. “There is no magic in it. It is an arithmetic inevitability given the size of our population,” said the former finance minister.
The former finance minister is trying to create an impression which is completely untrue, said FM Sitharaman, referring to Chidambaram’s comments. “It is not a mathematical inevitability, you need effort,” she said, adding that a country would need a visionary leader to achieve such milestones.
“Prior to 2014, 10 years – completely lost decade – because of bad policies, because of looking the other way when massive corruption was happening. Economy had literally gone down from what it was in 2004,” said FM Sitharaman.
She said that the image of the country is an extremely important aspect along with the GDP ranking and the per capita calculations. “Unless any family’s income is substantial, it cannot meet the needs of everybody in the family. Similarly, unless the GDP of the country is widened or grown, you are not going to be able to meet the demands of the economy,” she said.