“This is a government of two-and-a-half persons, that is, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and one in-house lawyer. They don’t have the expertise and they have surrounded themselves by persons who don’t have the expertise.
“They are now in a sealed echo-chamber. They don’t hear what is happening. The distress the RBI has documented of small and medium enterprise. These poor fellows had been clamouring and shouting. Nobody heard them,” he added.
He said that persons like Yashwant Sinha, P Chidambaram and several other economists have been “talking about facts”.
“And those facts emerge from official reports such as The Economic Survey, the RBI surveys, the SBI’s report etc. Is it a fact or not that GDP has collapsed to 3.7 per cent according to the old series? Is it a fact or not that index of industrial production has gone down from about 9 per cent in 2015-16 to about 1.7 per cent in April to July? Is it not a matter of concern?” Shourie said.
However, he said, despite all the red signals, there was little hope of a course change as “it all flows from the nature of the government” and the Modi government has a “sense of hustings”.
“Their core competence is event management. They are so self-satisfied with it. They are just briefing each other, not listening to others... They are concerned about 300-feet statute, bullet trains etc,” he said.
On BJP and government functionaries calling former Union minister Yashwant Sinha a “frustrated” person after he lashed out at the government, Shourie said it was “their standard operating procedure”.
“Whenever they are confronted with inconvenient facts, they try to bury it in avalanche of abuse. I have aconstructive suggestion for them. They should publish a list of persons in advance who they think are frustrated,” he said.
He said that the government’s policies must have predictability, stability and credibility -- all of which is totally absent now -- so that investors and industry are sure of what they can expect from the government and not taken by surprise by out of the blue announcements followed by policy flip flops as has happened under the present regime, be it demonetisation or GST implementation.