Describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation as ‘fire-bombing’ on India’s poor and the middle-class, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi alleged on Friday and said that the real objective of the mammoth currency ban exercise, was to help cash-strapped banks forcefully accumulate wealth from the poor, in order to waive off loans worth thousands of crore to the country’s super-rich.
“On November 8, Modi firebombed Indians. He burnt India. He did not ask anyone, neither the finance minister, nor a poor man, about what would happen. Narendra Modi understands everything. He just went ahead and did it. And he laughed while doing it. He had fun,” Gandhi told a public meeting in Fatorda legislative assembly constituency located around 40 kms from Panaji.
Gandhi also said, that what Modi called a surgical strike was actually a fire-bombing of 99 per cent of India, all done for the benefit of one per cent of India’s super-rich who the Congress vice president said, were Modi’s friends.
“On November 8, he stands up like his friend Obama. He says, ‘dear poor folk of India, the money in your pocket, the money of your labour and work, is paper now’. Then he laughs at a pop concert, he jokes. This was not a surgical strike. This was a fire-bombing on 99 per cent of Indians. In World War II, they developed a new way of dropping bombs. 200-300 planes used to pass over a town and drop down 1000s of tons of fire bombs. Whole city was destroyed to ashes Rotterdam, Dresden and Tokyo was burnt down to ashes. More people in Tokyo died than in Hirosima due to firebombing. A firebomb did what a nuclear bomb could not do,” he said.
“Narendra Modi ji, when an Indian farmer buys seeds, fertiliser he does not buy it via debit card, he buys it via cash. You have set fire in his home. When a labourer works and gets money in the evening, he gets it in cash, you have burnt his home. In Goa you have burnt the fishing industry, tourism industry was burnt, in Pune you have destroyed the automobile industry, in Punjab you have finished the cycle and the sports industry, in Kanpur you have destroyed the leather industry, in Mirzapur, the carpet industry and you are laughing. You are having funIJ” Gandhi also said.
Rahul Gandhi also accused Modi of creating an India with two unequal halves, one which includes the super-rich, who form one per cent of the popular and the 99 per cent others who are “farmers, labourers, small shopkeepers, middle class folk”.
“In the last two and a half years, one per cent of the people have been awarded 60 per cent of India's wealth... 50 families today in India have most amount of wealth. The biggest share of wealth of India is in the hands of 50 families. And these are the same people who with Narendra Modi to Australia, US, fly in planes and crack big business deals. I do not want to take names, but you know their names,” Gandhi said.
Gandhi claimed that Modi supported India’s super-rich, because he claimed they were the ones who are the financial architects of his image and personality.
“In the last two and a half years, Narendra Modi has Rs. 1.10 lakh crore has waived off from these same people. I spoke of Mallya first, after demonetisation Narendra Modi has waived off Rs. 1200 crore from him. Banks are closed. Rs. 8 lakh crore have been looted. Banks cannot start cannot give loans,” Gandhi said.
“One per cent are super-rich, the same people from the 50 families, they have cornered Rs. 8 lakh rupees. When a farmer does not pay his dues, you call him a thief. You snatch his house, his farm. When a middle class takes a bank loan and does not repay, you reach his home, hassle him. You try to take money back from him, snatch it back, threaten him. But when the super-rich of India, do not return Rs. 8 lakh crore to Indian banks, then you call it a non performing asset,” he also said.
“This was demonetisation. Snatch money from the poor and feed the rich. Pull money from 99 per cent people and give it to the fifty families who account for one per cent of the population. This was the objective of demonetisation,” Gandhi further said.