A day after Infosys co-founder and face of the Indian information technology business N.R. Narayana Murthy raised concerns about the country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth, Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi has taken a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a tweet, Congress parliamentarian Gandhi stated on Wednesday, “Modi hai to Mumkin hai”, which is in Hindi and means “Anything's Possible as long as Modi is there". He did so while sharing a newspaper image of a report of Murthy’s concern that India's GDP growth may hit its lowest since the country’s independence in 1947.
"Modi hai to Mumkin hai" was also an electoral slogan during the 2019 parliamentary elections and it was coined to send a message to the Indian electorate that Modi, being a doer, would fulfill the aspirations of the people.
Gandhi has used the same slogan as a sarcasm to take a jibe at the current macroeconomic conditions.
Infosys founder Murthy, who has supported Modi, on Tuesday said at an event in Bengaluru, “India’s GDP is expected to shrink by at least 5 percent. There is a fear that we may even reach the lowest GDP growth since independence, since 1947”.
India's growth has been declining consistently during the last three years due to factors like the crisis in the country’s financial sector as well as the US-China trade war.
GDP growth has fallen from 7.2 percent in the financial year 2017-18 (April 2017 - March 2018), to 4.1 percent in 2019-20. The GDP growth in 2018-19 was 6.1 percent. India is projected to post degrowth in the period between April 2020 and March 2021.
Congress, the main opposition party of India, has been attacking the Modi government’s handling of the Indian economy.
Last week, former Prime Minister and Congress leader Manmohan Singh said the Indian government must borrow more to meet the needs of the economy. Earlier this month, Gandhi had said that people’s trust in the economy has evaporated. Another senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram urged the Modi government to provide urgent relief to sectors like aviation, hospitality, and tourism, which have been deeply impacted by the pandemic.