Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday released a video, accusing the Modi government of destroying the informal sector of the economy and trying to enslave it. He called the entire country to fight against the government who wants to ‘break this sector’ of the economy.

“The BJP government has attacked the informal structure. There is an attempt to turn you into a slave,” he said in the first of the video series released on Monday. The Congress leader said that demonetisation, ‘wrong’ GST, and the lockdown are three examples of the government’s attempt to destroy the informal sector which provides 90% jobs to people.

Talking about the nationwide lockdown, which was implemented on March 24 by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government to curb the spread of coronavirus, Gandhi said, “Don’t think the lockdown was unplanned. Don’t think it was done at the last minute. The aim of these three decisions was to destroy our informal sector.”

Gandhi said the informal sector, which comprises the poor, farmers, and small traders have a lot of money which the government cannot touch. “They want to break this sector and extort this money from them,” he said.

The Congress leader, in the four-minute video titled ‘Let’s talk economy, said that the attack by the government on the informal sector will be seen soon when ‘India won’t be able to produce jobs.’

Talking about the 2008 world recession, Gandhi said in the US banks fell, corporations fell and companies shut down and banks also fell in Europe, but India was unaffected and the UPA government was in power at the time.

Gandhi said he went to the prime minister and asked Manmohan Singh what is the reason why the entire world suffered an economic crisis but India remained unaffected.

“Manmohan Singh ji replied, Rahul if you want to understand India’s economy, you will have to understand that India has two economic structures. One is the formal economy and the other is the informal economy. You know the big companies which constitute the formal sector. The informal sector comprises of farmers, labourers, MSMEs. Till the time India’s informal sector is strong, no economic storm can touch India,” he said.

Gandhi’s comments come ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament where the Congress party wants to corner the government over the state of the economy, besides other issues including the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Chinese aggression at the border.

The Congress has also accused the government of failing to handle the economy as well as the pandemic, alleging that the lockdown has failed to have the desired effect and has hit the poor and the marginalised the hardest.