Thread by @AparBharat

A man who witnessed the economic failures of Indira & Rajiv Gandhi, he always has been Congress's hope to revive the economy. He himself was the PM for 10 long years, sitting on pile of scams

I present you my #Thread on biggest Economic blunder in India's history, Manmohan Singh

Lets see chronology

-1972-1976 Chief Economic Advisor of India
-1982-1985 RBI Governor
-1985-1987 Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission
-1991-1996 Finance Minister of India
-2004-2014 Prime Minister of India

Quite an illustrious career, but we need to see wat did India achieve

His first stint as Chief Economic Advisor came in 1972 after big announcement of Garibi hatao. Probably these 4 years frm 1972-76 were worst in India's history

Indira took draconian decisions like Bank Privatisation, Insurance Privatisation, Privy purse abolition, Income tax 98%

1973 Inflation 22%
1974 Inflation 20%
1975 Inflation 25%

A conspiracy theory says, Indira had imposed Emergency to hide her economic failures, there was huge unemployment, farm crises and labours were worst affected, chaos in India. Even in pandemic we r doing better than Indira

After Emergency was imposed the economy came to halt, market and industry worst affected and the inflow of investment had stopped

One may argue, this was Indira's failure, but then you have to ask, what was the Chief Economic Advisor of India doing? Just watching the disaster 🙄

1982-1985 RBI Governor

India desperately needed economic reforms like liberalisation & getting private sector rolling. But Congress was opposed to private sector which caused economic slow down & made tough for reviving economy.
RBI didn't take any decision to attract investment

1985-1987 Dy. Chairman of Planning Commission

Financial advisor to Rajiv Gandhi, they decided to implement some fancy reforms to revive the GDP growth, make India an attractive investment destination for foreign players. Looks ambitious, but the question is, Did it work?

Ambitious economic policies which look fancy from outside, led to a total economic collapse by 1989.
Growth rate was planned for 5%, exceeded to 6% p.a but fiscal deficit was 7% of GDP which led to total collapse by 1991.
Yes, Manmohan was equally responsible along with Rajiv

Due to the fancy economic policies and so called technology revolution of Rajiv Gandhi like computers, television, radio, etc led to huge imports from foreign countries & created a huge trade account deficit. This should have been planned in better way to avoid economic crisis