BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Monday advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi to develop a “temper” to listen to the unpleasant truth and stop “frightening” his government’s economists, if he wants to drive the economy out of the crisis.

“The way Modi runs the government is that very few people can step out of the line. He should encourage people to tell to his face that no this can’t be done. But I think he has not yet developed that temper,” Swamy said.

Swamy also blamed the demonetisation, especially the role of RBI and the Finance Ministry in not properly flagging the real issues or preparing well, and the hasty introduction of GST for the present crisis in the economy.

“Today we need a method by which our economy can have a policy for the short-run, for the medium-term and for the long-term. But that is not there today. I am afraid the economists that the government has recruited seem so frightened to tell the truth to the prime minister, while the prime minister himself is focused only on the micro-projects,” he said while speaking at a book launch.

He said Modi focuses on the micro or unilateral issues like the Ujwala scheme for distributing cooking gas to the poor women, but underlined that the economy requires a multilateral approach which encompasses various aspects.

It is not required to have a prime minister who is a master in economics, he said, and pointed to PV Narasimha Rao’s “sagacity” of having a Finance Ministry led by Manmohan Singh to drive the 1991 reforms.