Budget 2024: Congress leader P Chidambaram accuses FM Nirmala Sitharaman of not speaking on real issues

Presenting Congress critique, former finance minister P Chidambaram said that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech, the earlier "mini economic survey" and the President's address have made "boastful claims" and "trotted out" in three days numbers that have been "challenged by economists and domain experts". He accused the FM of not speaking on real issues such as the state of unemployment, inflation and the concerns of women and farmers.

"The FM spoke about the youth. She did not speak about unemployment... The FM spoke about women. The topmost concerns of women are the rising crime against women and widespread unpaid employment... The FM spoke about farmers. Every farmer will tell you a story of how he/she is unhappy doing farming. The FM did not reveal the number of suicides among farmers including agricultural labour," he said.

"The FM spoke about GDP, but she did not speak about the per capita income. She spoke about free grain to 80 crore persons, but did not speak about India's rank in the Global Hunger Index... She barely referred to inflation but she did not refer to the fact that food inflation currently is 7.7%," he added.


"In the last year of UPA, 2013-14, we left a GDP growth rate of 6.4% and an average growth rate of 7.5%. In the NDA period, the average growth rate has been less than 6%."