Mocking Rahul Gandhi’s poll promise to waive farmers’ loans within 10 days of the Congress being voted to power in Rajasthan, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said that the party is resorting to such slogans as it knows it will not come to power.
Jaitley said they had made this promise both in Karnataka and Punjab, but reduced the waiving of loans to a “make-believe formality”, when they found that they cannot do it in Punjab.
The Union Finance Minister was referring to the partial waiving of farm loans of up to ₹2 lakh, taken from cooperative banks only. But waiving the loans even partially resulted in a huge shortfall of funds for developments, he said.
Those who do not have the knowledge of a subject tend to seek cheap publicity. It needs vision, and not slogans, to run the country,” he said.
It has become a trend to give slogans to hide ignorance, said Jaitley, adding the slogan-giving custom was started in 1971 with ‘Garibi Hatao’ but the country is still grappling with the problem. The time for sloganeering is over now as people’s expectations from political leaders are high, he added.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.