Jobs created by small firms, not tycoons, says Rahul

TIL Desk/National/Karnataka/ Blaming the note ban and a flawed GST for the country’s economic slowdown, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said jobs were created by small and medium companies and not by the country’s top industrial tycoons.

“The Congress believes that jobs are created by small and medium companies and not by top 15-20 firms run by tycoons, who have direct access to the country’s Finance Minister and Prime Minister,” he said at an interaction with traders and small businessmen in Karnataka’s textile town here.

Gandhi is on a two-day visit to the southern state for participating in the fifth leg of the party’s ‘Jan Ashirvada Yatra’ to seek the people’s blessings for victory in the May 12 Karnataka assembly election. Claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a very simplistic vision of the world, he said the former thought small traders were bad while income tax officials good.

Accusing the BJP-led NDA government of using the Goods and Services Tax (GST) scheme as an instrument of oppression than of freedom, Gandhi said the new indirect tax regime was envisioned to have one slab, exempting goods and services used by the poor from it. “But the GST we have is completely different from what was envisioned.”