All round mismanagement led to economic slowdown: Manmohan Singh

"The last quarter’s GDP growth rate of five percent signals that we are in the midst of a prolonged slowdown. India has the potential to grow at a much faster rate but all round mismanagement by the Modi government has resulted in this slowdown," Singh, who is a veteran economist, said a video statement.

His comments came two days after the India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the first quarter of the financial year 2019-20 dropped to touch a figure of five percent.

It is a sharp drop of 0.8 per cent points in comparison to the quarter that ended in March.

Singh said: "It is particularly distressing that the manufacturing sector's growth is tottering at 0.6 percent. This makes it very clear that our economy has not yet recovered from the man-made blunders of demonetisation and hastily implemented GST."

He also urged the government to "put aside vendetta politics, and reach out to all sane voices and thinking minds, to steer our economy out of this man-made crisis."

"Our youth, farmers and farm workers, entrepreneurs and the marginalised sections deserve better. India cannot afford to continue down this path," said he.

"Nominal GDP growth is at a 15 years low. There is a gaping hole in tax revenues. Tax buoyancy remains elusive as businessmen, small and big, are hounded and tax terrorism continues unabated. Investor sentiments are in doldrums. These are not the foundations for economic recovery," he added.

He also lashed out at the Modi government for undertaking policies leading to massive job-less growth and said "more than 3.5 lakh jobs have been lost in the automobile sector alone. There will similarly be large scale job loses in the informal sector, hurting our most vulnerable workers."

"The low inflation rate that the Modi government likes to showcase comes at the cost of our farmers and their incomes, by inflicting misery on over 50 percent of India’s population," he said.