NDA government destroyed India’s demographic dividend by deliberately neglecting youth: Congress

India's demographic dividend has been destroyed by the BJP-led government's biased approach to the economy, says Congress leader.

India’s demographic dividend has been “destroyed” as the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s approach to the economy “is biased in favour of the rich”, Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Thursday, after the presentation of the Interim Union Budget in Parliament. He added that the party was not afraid of a white paper analysing the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s record on handling the economy.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, in a video statement, claimed that both “vision and accountability were missing” from the Interim Budget. “Any budget has two aspects: one, to provide a status report on the previous years, and the other is to provide a vision for the next year. Both of these are missing from this Interim Budget,” Mr. Kharge said.

Addressing a press conference at party headquarters, Mr. Chidambaram slammed the Budget’s provisions for key sectors, including the youth, women, and farmers, as well as the policy of “minimum government and maximum governance”.

While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had talked about youth, she did not acknowledge the “rampant” unemployment, said the Congress leader, adding that she had not mentioned that over 30,000 farmers and agricultural labourers had died by suicide between 2020 and 2022, nor the low participation of women in the labour force.

“By deliberate neglect over the last 10 years, the government has destroyed the demographic dividend story and dashed the hopes of millions of youth and their families,” Mr. Chidambaram said. “It is a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The government is either ignorant or callous to the fact that the top 10% owns 60% of the nation’s wealth and earns 57% of the national income, and that income inequality has widened significantly in the last 10 years,” he added.

Asked about India being described as the fastest growing economy, the former Finance Minister said that the “fastest growing economy is not a badge of honour”.

“China’s GDP is five and a half times more than our GDP. If they grow at, say 3%, in order to match their annual growth, we have to grow at 15%... So don’t talk about GDP growth. Talk about the per capita income growth. If the GDP is growing at such a high rate, why is the per capita income growing at half that rate?” he asked.