Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday, 18 May, said that India “looks a lot like Sri Lanka” with respect to the issues of unemployment, petrol price, and communal violence, which have been on the rise in the past five years.
Gandhi shared a set of six graphs depicting the apparent similarity between India and debt-ridden Sri Lanka during 2017-21 and tweeted, “Distracting people won’t change the facts. India looks a lot like Sri Lanka.”
The first set of graphs depict rise in unemployment from 2017 in both the countries, peaking around 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns in India, and then dipping the next year.
The second set compares petrol prices in India and Sri Lanka, which have been on the rise since 2017 and skyrocketed around 2021.
The third set of graphs shows rise in communal violence during 2020-21 in both the countries.
The graph attributes data taken from the the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), Lok Sabha Unstarred Questions, CMIE, Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, Central Bank of Sri Lanka and CEYPETCO (Ceylon Petroleum Corporation).
Recap: Sri Lanka's Economic Crisis
Sri Lanka is going through an economic meltdown of a scale unseen since the country's financial crisis of 1948. Prices of essential commodities like rice, milk, and oil have skyrocketed.
The main cause is the shortage of foreign currency, which has led to a huge reduction in imports of essential items like petroleum, food, paper, sugar, lentils, medicines, and transportation equipment.
The roots of the shortage lie in the recent failure of the tourism industry, the failure to procure enough FDI, and the government’s refusal to take a loan from the International Monetary Fund.
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