Congress in Charge of Research and Monitoring, Department of Communications, Amitabh Dubey. File | Photo credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Congress leader Amitabh Dubey on Sunday (Jan 1, 2026) said the budget was just a series of “flamboyant announcements” and claimed that the Modi government’s policies had shaken investor confidence and led to a fall in the value of the rupee.
One should be skeptical of the announcements, given the government’s track record of implementation, he said.
Mr Dubey, in-charge of research and monitoring in the party’s communications department, also criticized the government for the falling rupee, saying it had a combination of reasons, one of which was that investor confidence in India had fallen.
“The rupee is falling. It has been the fastest depreciating Asian currency in the last one year and there is a combination of reasons behind it. One of them is that investor confidence, of course in India, is falling. There are of course external reasons like US policy and so on, but the fact is that it is not just the rupee that is falling, Indian investors and Indian businessmen are fleeing,” traders told PTI.
“Each year 4,000 to 5,000 high net worth individuals settle in Dubai, London and Singapore. Why is this happening? If India’s growth story is so great, why are these people fleeing and relocating? And now they seem to be taking their money with them as FDI flows out of India,” Mr Dubey said.
Mr Dubey argued that this “exodus” was not healthy at all, suggesting something was missing in the Indian economy, saying: “In my opinion, it is partly the atmosphere of fear that has come in. Now, if you are raided by the ED, CBI, IT – recently a businessman took his own life in Bengaluru because of the kind of faith that people are promoting this economy, and how do you expect to invest in this economy?” Speaking on the Union Budget presented on Sunday (February 1), Mr Dubey said: “As always there were many flashy announcements about strategic sectors, about pharma, about big infrastructure projects.
But the question is, how about the implementation of the previous announcements? “There have been some very flashy announcements and as an Indian I hope some of them will go through, but we are very skeptical given the government’s record so far,” the Congress leader said.
Mr. Dubey also attributed the low growth rate and persistent unemployment to the fact that the government was only making statements but not implementing them.
“From the beginning, this government relied only on slogans. First they said ‘Ache Din’ will come and India will become a $5 trillion economy by 2022. What happened? Now they say India will become a developed nation by 2047. If this target is to be achieved, the growth rate should be at least 8% every year,” Mr Dubey said.
He also claimed that the rate of economic growth the government is talking about is based on fictitious numbers.
Published – 01 Feb 2026 19:54 IST