‘May the Farce be with you': Rahul Gandhi’s dig at FM Arun Jaitley

Oct 25, 2017, 20:01 IST

NEW DELHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s filmy analogies show no sign of stopping. Days after mocking the Centre’s ambitious Goods and Services Tax (GST) as “Gabbar Singh Tax”, Rahul on Wednesday took a dig at the Modi government’s economic policies by referring to an iconic dialogue from a very popular sci-fi franchise.

Scoffing at finance minister Arun Jaitley’s statement claiming a massive growth in GDP in the last three years, the Gandhi scion said in a tweet: “Mr Jaitley, May the Farce be with you.”

Rahul’s tweet was a pun on the famous line “May the Force be with you” from the Star Wars movies and indicated his belief that Jaitley’s optimistic forecast for the economy was a “farce” designed to mislead the people of the country.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the finance minister had said, “It is for the first time in history that continuously for 3 years India’s economy has been one of the fastest growing in world.”

The statement was contrary to government data which showed India’s GDP grew 5.7 per cent on a year-on-year basis during the April-June period, as opposed to 7.9 per cent for the same quarter last year. In fact, GDP growth rate has been slowing every quarter since March 2016, when it stood at a whopping 9.1 per cent.

Jaitley had proclaimed that India’s macro-economic fundamentals are very strong and reeled out economic indicators to support government contention that GDP growth slowdown has bottomed out and economy is turning around.

The government has also approved a bank recapitalisation programme amounting to Rs 2.11 trillion over the next two years to boost growth and investment, Jaitley had said. He also quoted a recent International Monetary Fund report that projected India will achieve an eight per cent growth rate soon.

Reacting to the government’s announcements to boost infrastructure, growth and employment, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala had termed the measures a “shoddy attempt of a desperate finance minister to defend the decimation of economy.”

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/may-the-farce-be-with-you-rahul-gandhis-dig-at-fm-arun-jaitley/articleshow/61224962.cms