The lady doth protest too much. Definitely.

Recalling reforms undertaken by former Prime Minister (PM) Narasimha Rao in 1991, Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman blamed the Congress for not continuing with them. "Several observers called 2004-14 as India's lost decade," she wrote. Indeed. A glance at the growth rate of India's gross domestic product (GDP) shows that India was growing in excess of 7% during most of those years except in 2008 when it fell to 3.08% because of the subprime crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 when our GDP grew by 7.04%, rising to 8.0% in 2015 and 8.26% in 2016 and then fell off sharply even though there was no global crisis during that period. The difference in growth rate between the Congress period and the Modi years becomes even more stark if we see the price of crude oil which started climbing from 2004, when the Congress came to power, and was above $70 per barrel from 2010 to 2014, when Modi came to power, following which it fell rapidly and has stayed subdued since. Modi raked in a bonanza of nearly Rs 12 trillion by raising taxes on fuel from 2014 to 2019. On top of that Modi forced the Reserve Bank (RBI) to transfer Rs 1.76 trillion from its reserves last year. We have not been told what happened to all that money but the emptiness of government coffers is emphatically shown by the exorbitant rise in taxes on fuel, "making retail prices among the highest in Asia and almost double that in neighboring Pakistan" and "are adding another headwind to an economy facing the biggest contraction in four decades". In 2014, Modi spoke to banks about addressing non-performing assets (NPAs), but 6 years later public sector banks (PSBs) may need to raise $20-50 billion capital to be able to lend. In September, well before the coronavirus crisis, the FM herself asked PSBs to lend freely to small businesses and homebuyers. This is known as 'loan mela' which translates to 'a fair for loans', first conceived in the 1980s by the Congress. Although the goods and services tax (GST) was first proposed in 1999, it was implemented in 2007 under Modi. However, multiple illogical rates have made the GST difficult to comply with and "relatively high rates have made both industry and services less competitive, especially in comparison with their international peers." wrote Ajit Ranade. "To remove any perception of harassment, tax assessment and scrutiny were made faceless," wrote Sitharaman. Aggressive tax demands can easily be made online by tax officials because of unrealistic targets set on them. Finally, in 2009 consumer price inflation was in double digits, but the RBI was reducing interest rates, leading to large negative real interest rate and a defeat for Congress. Retail inflation rose to 6.09% in June despite a drop in demand but the RBI, which has been slashing interest rates already, is expected to reduce rates even further. Other similarities with the Congress are: waiver of bank loans to farmers, import substitution and enormous fiscal deficits. In eulogizing Modi and trashing Congress, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."