{"id":181647,"date":"2025-12-12T23:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T23:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/181647\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T23:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T23:36:09","slug":"cong-mp-hooda-slams-govt-over-record-faultlines-in-economy-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/181647\/","title":{"rendered":"Cong MP Hooda slams govt over &#8216;record faultlines&#8217; in economy- The Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi, Dec 12 (PTI) Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda on Friday alleged that the economy under the current administration has accumulated &#8220;record after record, all in the wrong direction&#8221; and claimed there are &#8220;record faultlines&#8221; in the economy.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He listed concerns over the rupee&#8217;s performance, rising inequality, soaring debt and the shrinking space for competition across key sectors.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During a discussion on the Supplementary Demands for Grants, Hooda, the Lok Sabha MP from Rohtak in Haryana, said the value of the Indian rupee had deteriorated to its &#8220;weakest level in 75 years&#8221; and criticised the finance ministry&#8217;s defence of the depreciation.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 &#8220;I read your statement, finance minister, where you said the rupee has not fallen; it is the dollar that has gone up. This is like saying two wrestlers fought and the father of the one who lost claims his son didn&#8217;t lose; the other one was simply stronger,&#8221; he said, adding that the rupee had become the &#8220;worst-performing currency in Asia&#8221;.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He also pointed to the widening current account deficit, saying the country had hit a 78-year record.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 &#8220;In October this year alone, the current account deficit touched 41.7 billion dollars. This is a historic high,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Citing a recently published report, Hooda argued that economic inequality had surged to unprecedented levels. &#8220;One per cent of the richest citizens now hold 40 per cent of the country&#8217;s wealth and 65 per cent of national income. This is not just a 78-year record&#8230; this is a 100-year record,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He further claimed that while the government had written off Rs 16 lakh crore in the past decade, these were &#8220;corporate write-offs&#8221; whereas during the UPA government, &#8220;we waived Rs 78,000 crore of farmers&#8217; loans&#8221;.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hooda accused the government of fostering monopolies and duopolies in major industries, saying such concentration of power was &#8220;never seen before in India&#8221;. In aviation, he said, &#8220;Sixty-five per cent of the market is with IndiGo and 26 per cent with Air India and if both decide fares together, passengers have no choice.&#8221;<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He made similar arguments about the telecom sector, where he noted that only two companies now account for 80 per cent of the market.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 &#8220;In America, there are laws against monopolies and duopolies. In our country, nothing,&#8221; he said, alleging that the media space too was dominated by two corporate groups.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On unemployment trends, Hooda said the pattern had reversed in the past three years, with people moving back to agriculture instead of entering manufacturing.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He also flagged what he said was an unprecedented rise in public debt.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 &#8220;Never before have we seen debt at this level for states and the Centre combined,&#8221; he argued, questioning the government&#8217;s borrowing during election season.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He added pollution as yet another &#8220;record&#8221; and said the overall economy showed &#8220;deep fault lines&#8221;.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 &#8220;The government is borrowing for public spending, but (is) choosing optics over outcomes,&#8221; he said, adding that the slogans should shift from &#8220;Start-up India to Shut-down India, Make in India to Made for India&#8221;.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hooda also criticised the defence sector allocations and the Agniveer scheme, claiming it had caused &#8220;significant damage&#8221;. He alleged that funds under the Khelo India programme were disproportionately routed to Gujarat, while Haryana, &#8220;which produces the maximum athletes&#8221;, received a &#8220;meagre budget&#8221;.<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, Union minister Kiren Rijiju intervened, saying, &#8220;Don&#8217;t drag athletes into politics.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Delhi, Dec 12 (PTI) Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda on Friday alleged that the economy under the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-181647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}