Rahul Gandhi Finds Anti-Modi Ammo in Nobel Winner Paul Krugman's News18 Rising India Speech

New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said that despite warnings from various quarters, PM Narendra Modi is living in denial about mass unemployment crisis in the country.

"The Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, confirms what we've been saying for over two years now. Mass unemployment is the biggest threat India faces. Unfortunately, we have a PM who lives in denial. Afraid his "Acche Din" PR will take a beating," tweeted Rahul.

The Congress leader was referring to Krugman's speech at News18 Rising India Summit, where the economist sent out a word of caution saying that India could face mass unemployment if it does not grow its manufacturing sector.

"There is this concept called artificial intelligence that you should be wary of. In future, while diagnosis may be outsourced to a doctor in India, it could also go to a firm based on artificial intelligence. Things like this could be a cause for worry for Indian services sector," said Krugman at News18 Rising India Summit.

The economist further added that Japan and China could not be looked upon as future world leaders because of their declining working-age population, while India's manpower is set to grow substantially. "In Asia, India could take the lead but only if it also develops its manufacturing sector, not only the services one,” he said.

“India’s lack in the manufacturing sector could work against it, as it doesn't have the jobs essential to sustain the projected growth in demography. You have to find jobs for people,” he added.

The other big cause of worry, according to Krugman, could be a financial concept called the ‘middle-income trap’. "This basically means that once India achieved a standard of growth, for its masses it could get stuck there for a long time. Since India has achieved a great level of progress lately it has exposed itself to such problems that only the more mature economies were exposed to," he said.

The Nobel laureate did say that that there were some very good reasons to be hopeful about India's economic progress at the world stage. “The gap between India and world's big economies grew after independence. In the 80s, the whole pattern of world development changed into two patterns. Globalisation became the great leap forward and long periods of growing trade meant not only growth in volume but also character,” he said.

He went on to state that it was perhaps because of its neighbour — China — that India wasn't being recognised in the manner it should have been.

"Rest of world is not paying as much attention to India as it should. If China wasn't around, we would have said what an incredible story India is. Quadrupling of GDP per capita in a very short time, becoming a better place to do business etc."