Stepping up its attack on the Union government’s management of the economy, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday claimed that 100 crore Indians did not have any extra income to spend and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “version of Viksit Bharat empties ordinary Indians’ pockets and filled the coffers of select billionaires”.
Mr. Kharge said India is staring at a global tariff war and trade barriers and the Union Budget announcements have turned out to be a “damp squib”.
“Narendra Modi ji, 100 crore Indians do not have any extra income to spend… 60% of our GDP is dependent on consumption. But it is only the top 10% in India who drive economic growth and consumption and 90% cannot afford to buy basic daily needs,” the Congress Chief said.
Addressing a press conference, party spokesperson Ajoy Kumar claimed that nearly ₹80 lakh crore of investors’ wealth has been wiped out from the capital markets in the past one year and the situation would get worse if U.S. goes ahead with its “threat of reciprocal tariffs”.
Pointing out that India slashed the import tariff on Harley Davidson motorcycles by 50% and the Tesla cars by 85% ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the U.S., Mr. Kumar said if such concessions are given to sectors like agriculture, India would become a “dumping ground” for U.S. and Chinese products.
The principal Opposition party also raised the issue of household indebtedness and said the root cause of such a “deep-seated” malaise was the stagnation in real wages but the government had failed to acknowledge the “crisis”.
Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh, in a statement, cited the recently-released Indus Valley Annual Report 2025, an examination of India’s economic landscape and start-up ecosystem by VC firm Blume Ventures, to target the Modi government.
Mr. Ramesh said the most worrying aspects of the report is its implications were for India’s household finances. The findings, he said, pointed out that India’s recovery from COVID-19 was based on consumption growth and consumer loans in the post-COVID years were about 18% of the Private Final Consumption Expenditure.
Stating that personal loans replaced industry loans as the biggest segment of non-food borrowing, Mr. Ramesh said, ”Much of this indebtedness was due to the rise in small ticket personal loans from non-banking financial companies – they comprise 82% of the new personal loans originated in 2024”.
Credit growth has now created a household indebtedness crisis instead of continuing to fuel consumption and household debt to GDP has hit an all-time high of nearly 43% he claimed.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, citing the same report, said “inequality in the country is at its peak”.
“… 57.7% of the total national income is owned by the richest 10% people and the poorest 50% population has a share of just 15%. The savings of the middle class are at a 50-year low and the income of employed people has remained stagnant for 10 years. Only a few rich people are becoming richer,” Ms. Vadra said in a post on X.
