Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government, alleging that it has destroyed the economy by repeatedly assaulting the informal structure.

“There is an attempt to turn you into a slave,” he said in a 3.38-minute video on the present state of economy.

In 2008, Gandhi said the world was hit by an economic storm, affecting the entire world, including the United States, Japan, Europe, China.

In the US and Europe, banks collapsed, corporations and companies shut down their businesses, but India remained unaffected, he added.

“India had a UPA government at that time. I went to the Prime Minister and asked him, Manmohan Singh ji, what is the reason that when the entire world has suffered an economic crisis India has remained unaffected?” the former Congress chief said.

“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,” he added.

The video is a part of Gandhi’s fresh series on economy. He had earlier released a five-part series on Chinese incursions in Ladakh.

“You know the big companies which constitute the formal sector. The informal sector comprises farmers, labourers and MSMEs. Till the time India’s informal sector is strong, no economic storm can touch India,” he said.

“But in the last six years, the BJP government has been attacking the informal sector. I am giving you three massive examples right now- demonetisation, wrong Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the lockdown enforced to contain the coronavirus pandemic,” Gandhi alleged.

“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,” he alleged.

From March 25, India witnessed several phases of a nationwide lockdown to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Gandhi had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and criticised the move, saying it will have disastrous consequences on the economy.

In the new video, Gandhi again took on Modi, saying he “needs the media and marketing” to run the government. “This media management and marketing is done by 15-20 people.”

Gandhi said the informal sector has a lot of money which the government cannot touch. “They want to break this sector and extort this money from them,” he added.

Gandhi said the effects of this attack on informal sector will be seen soon. “The results will be that India won’t be able to produce jobs because the informal sector produces 90% of the jobs. Once the informal sector is destroyed India won’t be able to produce jobs,” he claimed.

The Congress has been attacking the government over unemployment, saying it has assumed “fearsome” proportions. It also claimed that the record of “45 years of unemployment” has been broken as around 135 million people are likely to lose their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“You are the ones who run this country. You take us forward and there is a conspiracy against you. You are being cheated and there is an attempt to turn you into slaves. We have to understand this attack and the entire country has to unite to fight against this,” Gandhi said in his message to those involved in the informal sector.