Spokesperson: Prof. Gourav Vallabh: He said that it has become very evident in the last 8 years where the focus of the BJP government has been. Polarization and disharmony have taken a front seat whereas distressing issues such as rising inflation, unemployment and depreciating Rupee are nowhere in its agenda. The country witnessed the highest unemployment in the last 45 years. Various reports have time and again highlighted the fact that how 97% Indians got poorer in just one year between 2020 and 2021.

The BJP has brought about a doom with 7s. Retail Inflation is at 7.01%, Unemployment is at 7.8% and Rupee has depreciated 7% in the last 6 months vs the US Dollar. While these are worrying data points, the BJP government is in deep slumber. While on one hand the income is decreasing and people are losing jobs, inflation is landing a killer blow.

Retail inflation was recorded at 7.01% in June 2022 as per the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released yesterday. These numbers paint an alarming picture:

1.  The average retail inflation for the last 3 months, April 2022 to June 2022, stands at 7.3%.

2.  Rural Inflation is even higher at 7.09%. Combined with the rural employment rate of 8.03% in June 2022, it is a highly worrying statistic for a country where 70% of population resided in Rural areas.

3.  The retail inflation has been above RBI’s medium-term target of 4% for the last 33 months. The tolerance band set by RBI for retail inflation was 2% to 6%.

4.  Retail inflation has been above the upper band of 6% for the last 6 months.

5.  What’s worse is that RBI’s projection for retail inflation for the next quarter, July 2022 to September 2022 is 7.4%.

6.  Food inflation at 7.75%, particularly, is killing the lower- and middle-income groups. Inflation recorded in vegetables in June 2022 was 17.37%.

25 lakh salaried people losing jobs in June 2022, start-ups have been made to fire more than 11,000 employees in 2022, Rupee at an all-time low of 79.66 against the US Dollar, GDP growth stagnant- these portray the sorry state of macroeconomic affairs. At such a time, a draconian decision on imposing 5% GST was taken just a few days back on pre-packed and pre-labelled grains, fish, paneer, lassi, honey, jaggery, wheat flour, buttermilk, meat/fish (not frozen) and puffed rice (muri).

We have three very specific questions for the BJP government: 1. What has the government done to bring relief to the common Indian as far as inflation is concerned? 2. Why is there complete silence on part of the Modi Government? 3. With RBI’s projection for inflation at 7.4% for the next quarter, what are the measures that the government has in mind? Wednesday, July 13, 2022