Continuing his veiled attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former union minister and eminent journalist Arun Shouri felt that the Prime Minister seems to be constrained with a feeling of `insecurity’.

Though he didn’t mentioned this directly, comparing Modi to former Prime Minister during NDA regime, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he said, “Vajpayee appropriated failure and distributed success unlike how it is happening now. He did not have insecurities and gave everyone a chance.”

While Vajpayee never claimed the success of government as his own, it’s different in the case of Modi where he claims credit for various government initiatives, he added. Ridiculing Modi’s demonetisation move, he said that this looks like wielding the stick here for the dengue mosquito flying in Switzerland.

Speaking at the ongoing Hyderabad Literary Festival last evening, he wondered that how the move would help check black money which is lying in foreign shores. He asked that the one who actually has black money, is he keeping it in India in rupees? Those who have black money, they keep it outside. They buy companies, they buy estates, he added.

Stating that people would not exactly know whether demonetisation would help control black money or not, he said that an idea does not become valid just because the people have voted for it.

Referring to Modi’s thrust on directly transferring subsidy amount to common man accounts, he said “it is like throwing money out of the window. Somebody will pick it up, you can go and buy something. You say, it is consumption-led growth. It is nonsense.”

Shourie deplored that public resources had been wasted in not creating productive assets for economy to grow. He disapproved of the practice of giving subsidies to common people, which in turn is expected to lead to consumption led growth.