Govt in denial: Sitharaman's husband slams Centre over economic slowdown

New Delhi, Oct 14: Amid anxiety over the economic slowdown in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's husband Parakala Prabhakar has advised the Modi govenment to "embrace" the economic model put forward by former prime ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh.

In a column for The Hindu, Parakala Prabhakar claimed that the government is in 'denial mode', while 'data flowing uninterruptedly into the public domain show that sector after sector is staring at a seriously challenging situation'.

"The rejection of Nehruvian 'socialistic pattern of society' was clear since the days of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The BJP's advocacy of what can, at best, be loosely termed as a capitalist, free market framework remained untested in practice...In economic policy, the party mainly adopted 'Neti Neti (Not this, Not this'), without articulating what was its own 'Niti (policy)', the Union Minister's husband wrote.

"The issues that catapulted the party on to the centre stage of the country's political discourse and then to the seats of power both in the Centre and in various States had little to do with the articulation of an economic road map and its endorsement by the electorate," he wrote.

"The party think tank fails to realise that the attack remains more a political assault and can never graduate to an economic critique," he added.