GDP data prove note ban didn't affect growth: Modi slams critics

The government had pegged GDP growth at a 7.1% for 2016-17 despite note ban blues

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said gross domestic product (GDP) data, released by the Central Statistics Office on Tuesday, has answered the critics of demonetisation. 

He said the data was proof that his November 8 note ban decision did not impact growth rate. Modi said data showed growth has improved in agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors, and inflation has been reined in.

Addressing public rallies in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Maharajganj and Deoria, Modi took a swipe at “foreign educated economists” who criticise demonetisation. The PM said “hard work is more powerful than Harvard”. 

"On the one hand are those (critics of note ban) who talk of what people at Harvard say and, on the other hand, is a poor man's son who through his hard work is trying to improve the economy,” said the prime minister.

Recently, Amartya Sen, a professor at the Harvard University, had slammed the demonetisation decision as “despotic”. Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, has also been critical of demonetisation move. This wasn’t the first instance of the PM drawing the “Harvard and hard work” parallel. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, Modi had said at a public rally in Tamil Nadu that Chidambaram, who was then the finance minister in the United Progressive Alliance government, “is from Harvard, I am from hard work”. “Do we need Harvard or hard work for the development of the country?” the BJP's prime ministerial candidate had asked. Days later, during the Budget speech in Parliament, Chidambaram had replied: “My mother and Harvard taught me the value of hard work.”

The government had on Tuesday pegged GDP growth at a higher-than-expected 7.1 per cent for 2016-17 despite note ban blues.

The PM on Wednesday reached out to the farmers of eastern UP, where two phases of Assembly elections for 90 seats are left. He said the first decision of a BJP-led new government in Lucknow would be loan waiver to small farmers. The PM said the only question that remained to be answered on March 11, the day of counting, was whether the BJP will get two-thirds or three-fourths of the seat. "Never have elections gone one way like this...  the question is not who will form the government but will it be a two-thirds or three-fourths majority for BJP."

Modi said poverty had no religion, and the poor deserved development. He said UP has lagged in development and pointed to a UP government website that he claimed compared the socio-economic conditions of UP to those in sub-Saharan Africa. The PM criticised the UP government’s inability to take central government’s assistance for reaching power to rural areas. Modi said the SP government was interested in benefitting only the ruling family and developing their native village of Saifai.

Akhilesh Yadav, at a public meeting in Deoria, said the Modi government should first tell people about its performance in the last three years. He also criticised note ban. "Till a few days ago, Modi was talking about bagging 300 seats in the UP Assembly. BUT all of a sudden he started talking about a hung House. Whenever anyone talks like this, it is safe to presume that he has lost the elections," Akhilesh Yadav said.