NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday posted a video alleging that the government was deliberately attacking the informal sector and the recent lockdown was one such calculated move.
Gandhi said the aim was to enslave the poor who form the backbone of India’s informal economy.
“The BJP government has attacked the informal structure. There is an attempt to turn you into a slave,” he said adding that demonetization, flawed GST implementation and lockdown were all examples of how the government was undermining a whole sector.
Claiming that in 2008 India survived the final recession due to a strong informal sector, Gandhi said: “Till the time India’s informal sector is strong, no economic storm can touch India. Now let’s come to present day. The BJP government has been attacking the informal sector over the past six years. I am giving you three massive examples right now- Demonetisation, wrong GST and Lockdown. Don’t think the lockdown was unplanned. Don’t think it was done at the last minute. The aim of these three decisions was to destroy our informal sector,” he said.
Gandhi argued that the PM needed the media and marketing to run the government and this was being done by 15-20 people of the formal sector.
“The informal sector has a lot of money which the government can’t touch. They want to break this sector and extort this money from them. The effects of this attack on informal sector will be seen soon. The results will be that India won’t be able to produce jobs. Because the informal sector produces 90 per cent of the jobs. Once the informal sector is destroyed India won’t be able to produce jobs,” said the Congress leader.
He said the poor, farmers and small traders of the informal economy run this country, take it forward and “there is a conspiracy against them.”
He said the informal sector workers were being cheated.
“We have to understand this attack and the entire country has to unite to fight against this,” he said.
The former Congress chief said when he asked then PM Manmohan Singh now India survived the 2008 recession, Singh told him it was due to the strength of the informal sector comprising farmers, labourers and MSMEs.