Opposition today accused the government of failing to control price rise and charged it with creating such a situation in the country due to which the common man was hurt the most.
The opposition attack led by BJP blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "failure" to control prices despite he being an economist.
Initiating the debate on Appropriation Bill, 2013, along with which the discussion on price rise was also taken up, Prakash Javadekar (BJP) said inflation in India was very high.
"The economist Prime Minister's biggest failure in 10 years is to arrest price rise. It is not a natural calamity. It is created by Congress. The common people are suffering ever since the Congress government came to power," he said.
Javadekar in the US inflation was 1.5 per cent, China 2.7 per cent, Britain 2.6 per cent, Japan 0.1 per cent, Brazil 5.6 per cent and South Africa 5.5 per cent, while India had 9.6 per cent inflation. It is less than only Venezuela which has 39 per cent inflation.
He said there is "complete mismanagement of food stock" as there was only 20 MT buffer stock and 40 MT foodgrains for PDS, while 80 MT foodgrains was rotting in godowns, which was not distributed free of cost to the poor despite Supreme Court directing the government to do so.
He charged the government with turning the country from an edible oil sufficient country till 2003 to 60 per cent import dependent now.
"It is your mismanagement," he said, alleging that India had the maximum taxes on petroleum products than anywhere in the world.
"Which other country has so much taxation on petroleum products," he questioned, saying the Rs 2 lakh crore under-recoveries is equal to the amount of taxes recovered from the sector.
On devaluation of the Indian Rupee, he said, it was unfortunate that the Rupee had depreciated by 20 per cent from even the Bangladeshi Taka, adding inflation was more and growth was less in the country.
