The Congress on Tuesday asked the Centre to reverse its “disastrous” policies and heed to the advice of economists by printing more money and increase spending and not let another year go to waste.

While former Congress president Rahul Gandhi shared a graph of the rising unemployment rate and said, “PM’s hall of shame - Minimum GDP. Maximum Unemployment”, former finance minister P Chidambaram said all indicators point that the economy is in dire straits and said going by the performance of the economy in the last four quarters, 2020-21 has been the “darkest year” of the economy in four decades.

“If 2021-22 should not go the same way as 2020-21 did, the government must wake up, admit its errors of commission and omission, reverse its policies and heed the advice of economists and the Opposition,” Chidambaram said at AICC virtual Press conference.

“The current state of the economy is no doubt largely due to the impact of the pandemic, but it has been compounded by the ineptitude and incompetent economic management of the BJP-led NDA government,” he charged.

The former finance minister said good advice by distinguished economists and renowned institutions has been rebuffed so far and world-wide experience has been ignored.

“Suggestions on fiscal expansion and cash transfers have been turned down. Hollow packages like Atmanirbhar have fallen flat,” he said.

“We may note that Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee has called for printing money and increasing spending. Yet, even as recently as yesterday morning, the Finance Minister gave a long interview to some newspapers defending her misguided and disastrous policies,” he said.

Taking potshots at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her Chief Economic Adviser’s claims of a V-shaped economic recovery, he said, “It was a false story and we had expressed our strong reservations and warned there were no signs of a recovery.”

“We had pointed out that what the economy needed was a strong dose of stimulus, including increased government expenditure, direct transfers of cash to the poor and liberal distribution of free rations. Our pleas fell on deaf ears, and the result is a negative growth of (-) 7.3 per cent,” he said.

He also criticised the finance minister for treating the GST Council with disdain as she did not respond to any of the decisions pertaining to GST concessions for material used for Covid treatment.