📄White Paper in Parliament : Economic Comparison between UPA & NDA eras.
Context :
- The govt has come out with a white paper on the Indian economy, comparing its performance over 10 years with the UPA decade.
- It has attacked its predecessor for 'abandoning reforms' and 'policy paralysis'.
▫️Claims vs Data :
The 58-page white paper has 3 main parts:
- Part 1: Discusses the macroeconomic situation during the 10 years of UPA rule.
- Part 2: provides the "current status of the various corruption scams of the UPA government".
- Part 3: shows how the NDA "turned the economy around"
1. What is white paper?
2. What are the main highlights?
3. What did govt hide?
A Thread
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Data Source: Ministry of Statistics and Prog Implementation,Govt of India
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✅ What is ‘White Paper’?
- A white paper typically provides information about a specific issue.
- A government may present a white paper - say, on black money - to make people aware of the nature and scope of the problem and the possible ways to resolve it.

✅ What is the objective?
There are 4 stated objectives:
1. It seeks to inform everyone "of the nature and extent of governance, economic and fiscal crises that were bequeathed" to the NDA government when it assumed office in 2014.
2. It informs about "the policies and measures that (NDA) government took to restore the health of the economy" since 2014.

3. It "hopes to generate a wider, more informed debate on the paramountcy of national interest and fiscal responsibility in matters of governance over political expediency."
4. To commit ourselves to national development, with new inspira-tions, new consciousness, new resolutions, as the country opens up immense possibilities and opportunities."

✅ Some other major highlights of the white paper :
1. The UPA Government inherited a healthy economy ready for more reforms, but made it non-performing in 10 years.
2. UPA abandoned economic reforms.

3. In a quest to maintain high economic growth by any means after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, UPA severely undermined the macroeconomic foundations.
- it underscores high inflation, high fiscal deficit (or the money borrowed to meet expenses), and high proportion of bad loans in the banking system that dragged down economic activity.

4. Not only did UPA borrow heavily from the market, but the funds raised were applied unproductively.
5. Health expenditure of Indian households showed very little improvement.
6. Defence preparedness was hampered by policy paralysis.
- "By 2012, shortage of combat-ready equipment and ammunition was a chronic issue plaguing our forces,"

7. UPA's decade was marked by "policy misadventures and scams such as non-trans-parent auction of public resources (coal and telecom spectrum). (and) the spectre of retrospective taxation.

✅ What did NDA govt hide?
1. big reason why domestic inflation was very high during the last couple of UPA years and immediately subsided duing the first two of NDA is the cost of crude oil :
- $111 and $105 a barrel :FY12-FY14,
- $84 in FY15 and $46 in FY16.

2. White paper ignores all that is amiss with the economy.
- For instance, it does not even contain the word "unemployment".
- This was when the government's own Periodic Labour Force Survey showed that unemployment had reached a 45-year high in 2017-18.

3. Similarly, it makes no mention of the fact that there has been no formal measure of poverty since 2011.
- Or that this government has failed to conduct the decadal Census - the first such miss since 1881.

4. Also, a white paper on the Indian economy over two decades does not have a single chart on GDP growth over this period.

5. Indeed, on aggregate, data shows that India registered better GDP growth as wel as lower fiscal deficits during the UPA time.

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