Indian politics changed dramatically in 2014, why did Rahul Gandhi say this during his/her US visit

Rahul Gandhi These days he/she is on a US tour where he/she is meeting people from different communities. These include people from the Indian community, political figures, media, students and various professionals. On American soil, he/she is constantly raising issues related to India. he/she is speaking on national and international issues. However, there is a political uproar in the country over his/her statements. On Thursday, he/she interacted with the media at the National Press Club in Washington DC, USA. Here are excerpts from that meeting:

How do you see the personal and political change within you, and what factors have contributed to this change?

answer – I would not call it a change but a journey. I think in 2014 politics in India changed very dramatically. We have entered a phase of politics that we have never seen before in India. It is aggressive, an attack on the foundations of our democratic structure, so it is a tough fight. It has been a tremendous fight, this fight has of course changed me personally. I never thought I would travel across India. Before 2014 if you came to me and said you have to walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir I would have laughed at you and said this is ridiculous, but this was the only way left for the opposition in our country. The media was suppressed, institutions were controlled, agencies were attacking the opposition, governments were being toppled. Then we felt that we really had only one way – to go directly to the people of India. Of course it has fundamentally changed me.

What do you have to say about your walking tours across India?

answer – No! One trip was on foot and the other one was by car. One went from South India to Kashmir… that was on foot, that was 4,000 kilometres and the other went from Manipur, which as you know is burning, to Maharashtra. Actually, we were forced to do this politically by the situation in the country, because all the means that normally work in a democracy were not working. The media, the courts were not working, nothing was working. Then we said let’s go directly to the people. We went and it worked out well. Even though this trip was related to politics and my work, but on a personal level, I always wanted to do this. I always wanted to. Since I was young, I was young, I always had this thought in my mind that at some point in my life I should travel around my country and see what it is.

Unemployment is rising in India due to lack of production… Rahul Gandhi spoke in America, what did he/she say in praise of China?

As the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, how do you see your role evolving compared to your previous responsibilities? What new challenges or opportunities do you see in this position?

answer – This role is also an extension of what I did earlier. There is an ideological war going on in India between the Congress and our allies and the BJP and the RSS. There are two very different visions of India. We believe in a pluralistic vision, a vision where everyone has the right to flourish, all ideas are allowed to flourish freely, an India where you are not persecuted on the basis of what religion you believe in or what community you come from or what language you speak, versus a very rigid, a centralized vision. The landscape of the country is such that we protect the institutions of India, the weaker sections, the lower castes, the tribals, the minorities, the poor. After these visits, I feel that we should try to be the voice of as many people as possible. For that you have to go among them and understand what is happening, you have to go deep. You have to talk to people and then deeply understand what they are saying and disseminate it, then give a vision at a broader level. The Bharat Alliance’s vision for the country is obviously going to be fundamentally different from the centralised, authoritarian vision that the BJP is presenting.

What is your opinion about the inadequate representation of a large section of India’s population in governance?

answer – Let’s say 90% of India is either tribal or lower caste or Dalit or minority and they lack participation in the governance of the country, in the various institutions of the country, in the media of the country. So what we propose is a survey that will make the reality of power distribution in India transparent – the caste census.

What do you think about professionalising the Finance Ministry, ridding it of IAS officers and appointing scholars?

answer – The problem is much more widespread than that. The problem is about the participation of the weaker sections, the lower castes, particularly the Dalits. You might be surprised if I tell you that if you look at the top 200 corporates in India and you look at their management teams and you look at their CEOs, you will not find anyone from the lower castes. You will only find people from the upper castes. The same is with the Indian media… you will find the patronage of the upper castes. You look at the influencers on social media, you look at the big columnists, you look at the people who control the media infrastructure, everywhere you will find the same thing. A very small part of the nation is controlling the entire infrastructure. This problem is much broader and the first step to understanding the problem is actually to understand what the reality is. Leave aside corporates and media, what is the participation in our bureaucracy? If you look at the Indian government, 70 secretaries basically determine its direction… right? And I have said this repeatedly in the elections that 90 percent of the people of India are not represented in these people.

What is your opinion about the contract system in jobs? Many agencies are doing this to reduce their overhead due to government expenditure…

answer – We propose to change that. Our manifesto clearly says we don’t accept the contract system, we will change it. It’s true, something like that is happening, but a large part of it is basically to exclude people from lower castes. Actually, when you look at who the contractors are, they are not lower caste people. For me and India Alliance, the question is – is India fair? We have been independent for more than seven decades, how far have we come in this time? We have a constitution that says India should be a fair country – one person one vote, equal participation, equal participation for all castes… But discrimination as an idea is illegal and then when you look at the structure, the idea is much more. The first thing we want to understand is what is the extent of it? Our aim is to literally get data. This is the 21st century, everyone talks about data. We want data on fairness in India and once we get data on fairness in India, we can make policy proposals to fix it.

The problem of unemployment is huge in India. What is your thinking about creating employment opportunities on a large scale?

answer- I am saying here in the United States that at one time the West – America, Europe and India – was the manufacturer of the world. If you wanted to buy a car in the 60s you bought an American car, you wanted to buy a washing machine or a refrigerator, you bought an American refrigerator, you bought an American washing machine, American television. You guys were at the forefront of it. Then somewhere along the line, America and the West decided we are just going to stop and we handed the whole thing over to the Chinese. Now for a country like India to say look we are going to run a service based economy ignoring manufacturing means you cannot get jobs for your people. So one of the things I am interested in is manufacturing. If you look at what most American and Indian companies and most European countries do, they organize consumption. Organizing consumption is easy, organizing production is a completely different ball game, much more complicated.
When you organize production you have to deal with things that you don’t have to deal with when you organize consumption. So there is a huge opportunity, I think, for India and the US to regain that ability to produce. We don’t want to do it the way China is doing it, we don’t want to do it in an environment that is non-democratic, that is not liberal. The real question for the 21st century is – the Chinese have put forward a vision of production, which is a non-democratic production vision. Can the US and India answer this by putting forward an vision of production in a democratic and open society?

I think that is where a lot of the answers lie. We have a government in Karnataka. We have a government in Telangana, where we are focusing on manufacturing based on the different local characteristics that we have. Every region in India has its own specialty of production. If you go to any district in India, you will find something different. Bellary in Karnataka had a very big textile industry, which has been destroyed. So we are looking at these areas of excellence and then trying to bring in modern technology, financial support to build them. Our approach is of a decentralized production system. Unlike China, which has very large factories, we will think of small and medium businesses and bring in modern technology. We are testing some of these ideas in Karnataka and Telangana.