GST a good idea, but shabbily implemented: Shashi Tharoor in Lok Sabha Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor on taking part in the debate on the interim Budget in Lok Sabha, targeted the centre on its demonetization plan of 2016 and the introduction of GST regime in 2017.

He said that the Goods and Services Tax was a good idea but shabbily implemented. "If demonetization was a bad policy and badly implemented, GST was a good idea but which was badly designed and shabbily implemented," Tharoor said in the Lower House.

"The Goods and Services Tax has been used to trample over the financial autonomy of our states, and when coupled with demonetization, it resulted in finishing our job-generating small micro and medium businesses.

It caused a 45-year high unemployment, and ended the economic recovery that began in 2013," he said. "All while failing a to achieve all of its stated objectives, ordinary Indians have suffered.

Even the GST tax slabs on basic items - toothpaste, footwear, shirt and pants, rice and wheat. Instead of flushing our black money, it simply resulted in concentrating wealth in the hands of the government, but at the expense of Aam Aadmi," Tharoor added.