'One man and his arrogance...': Rahul Gandhi takes fresh swipe at Centre over economic toll of COVID-19 pandemic

'One man and his arrogance...': Rahul Gandhi takes fresh swipe at Centre over economic toll of COVID-19 pandemic

FPJ Web DeskUpdated: Monday, May 31, 2021, 01:40 PM IST
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Photo: Rahul Gandhi/Facebook |

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday took a fresh jab at the Central government, sharing an excerpt from an article that spoke about the economic toll of COVID-19 and the consequent lockdowns. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing unabated, there have been repeated lockdowns at both the state and Central level over the last year or so. This in turn last led to uncertainty, financial constraints and even layoffs for many.

"One man and his arrogance plus one virus and its mutants," read the one line caption to Gandhi's tweet. The report shared by the Wayanad MP quotes Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy CEO Mahesh Vyas to say that 97% of India's population has become poorer when compared to a year earlier.

Over the last few months, Gandhi has repeatedly hit out at the Centre over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as India's vaccination strategy. Most recently, on Sunday, he took a veiled dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's monthly radio programme "Mann Ki Baat", stating that the country can not fight the COVID-19 pandemic with "meaningless talks" once a month. India, he tweeted in Hindi, needed "right intention, policy, determination" to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Vyas, about 126 million jobs were lost when India was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, with a majority being daily wage earners. But while most of these jobs eventually returned, both earning propensity and the availability of opportunities had declined. In addition, he contends that many formal jobs returned with varying degrees of informality.

"When we ask people in our survey, how's their income today compared to a year ago, only 3 per cent tell us today that their income is better than a year ago; [about[ 55 per cent tell us categorically that it is worse than a year ago, and the remaining tell us that it is no better, no worse. This means, if you account for inflation, that more than 97 per cent of India's population has gotten poorer compared to where they were in terms of income [a year ago]," he told Business Standard.

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