No one bought PM’s advice on ‘frying pakoras also a job’: Chidambaram

New Delhi, June 11

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday slammed the BJP government for failing to generate jobs saying “so far nobody has bought the PM’s innovative idea that frying pakoras is also a job”.
Taking on Narendra Modi on the completion of four years of the BJP government, Chidambaram launched a scathing critique of policy saying nothing had moved in these four years.
Chidambaram said a flawed GST continued to haunt traders, gross Non Performing Assets had risen in the past four years from Rs 2.63 lakh crore to Rs 10.3 lakh crore and inflation is rising.
The former FM warned against rising inflation saying recent hike in repo rate by the RBI would raise interest rates further putting more burden on the consumers.
The senior Congress man said rising petrol and diesel prices were a case of “fleecing consumers”.
“There is absolutely no reason why the prices of petrol, diesel and LPG should be higher today than what they were in May and June,” said Chidambaram.
Lamenting joblessness, the FM rued that only a few thousand jobs had been created every year, a far cry from the PM’s promise of two crore jobs annually.
“Why has the Labour Bureau Survey for October-December 2017 not been released?” asked Chidambaram mocking the PM’s recent remarks that frying pakoras was also a job.
“Well no one has bought this idea so far,” said Chidambaram.
Dwelling on economy, the former FM said three of the four wheels on which the economy ran stood punctured.
“First, exports growth rate is negative. Second, private investments are in the doldrums and third, private consumption is limping,” said the veteran Congress leader raising red flags on farm distress.
On PM assassination plot
“Don’t take unofficial letters as official letters floating around in the desert of India. The business of the government is to provide complete and foolproof protection to the PM. The government should do that.”

On joint secretary posts being opened
“We need to know more about this and we will have a number of questions. There are serious misgivings about the advertisement put out by the government. A number of questions need to be asked and we will ask a number of questions as days go by. Joint secretary posts are about framing policy. There are bound to be questions,” he said.