During Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Rahul Gandhi visits Swaraj Ashram in Surat, targets Centre over inequality

When the yatra, which started from Mandvi town on Sunday morning, reached Bardoli town, Gandhi was accompanied by former Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh, veteran Bollywood actor and MP Raj Babbar and several other national and state leaders of the party.

Although people working in the ashram wanted to gift him a memento of “Gandhi Charkha”, they could not get a chance to do so because of the crowds, and the Congress leader left the ashram after a few minutes.

In the afternoon, Gandhi’s yatra entered tribal-majority Tapi district in south Gujarat, where he addressed a large number of tribals in Vyara town. He also interacted with two farmers.

“Today morning a delegation of 30 small and medium traders met me and they told me that due to demonetisation and GST (Goods and Services Tax), they have lost their business. These were meant to target and finish small businesses and traders. They came up with black farm laws to target farmers. There are crores of farmers in the country who do hard work and they are demanding MSP (minimum support prices), which is the actual price of their agricultural produce. The present government has rejected the demand outright.”

“The government spends Rs 65,000 per year for MGNREGA. If the same amount is given for 24 years, it is equal to the amount of written off loans and this amount belongs to “arabpatis”. They don’t waive farmers’ loans, don’t give crop insurance and MSP. Even farm produce is purchased in paisa and not in rupees,” the Congress leader said. “You will find Adani everywhere, in solar energy, defence, power, drones as well as NDTV. These media houses don’t know about the farmers’ issues and even the prices of their crops.”

“In India, how many people are from backward castes? They are 50 per cent, tribals 8 per cent and Dalits 15 per cent. Their combined population is 73 per cent. These people are not found in the list of owners or in the top management of 200 big companies of India. There is only one IAS officer among 90 bureaucrats who take decisions on how much money should be spent in the budget. If Rs 100 is spent for the budget, only 10 paisa goes to tribals, who are 8 per cent of the country’s population. They should be given 8 per cent of the total budget spend. The backward caste population in India is 50 per cent and there are only 3 IAS officers (5 per cent) from these castes. If we add all of them, only 6 per cent is spent for 73 per cent of the population. I want to tell you there is no representation and you have been cheated.”

Talking about the benefits of a caste census, Gandhi said, “The common people will know how much their community gets from the government. Similarly their presence in the bureaucracy, army, judiciary and media will also be known. If the officials and funds are distributed as per demography, people will know how many from their communities are in such places and they can demand their rights.”

“In India there are 22 people whose wealth is equivalent to the wealth of 70 crore people, who are farmers, labourers, tribal, dalits etc. The GST collected from farmers is the same as the GST collected from Ambani and Adani. You (farmers and tribals) are earning less and they are earning huge amounts. How come the GST should be equal? This is an injustice done to you. Actual politics will start after a caste-based census and economic census,” he added.

Gandhi also said that nobody wanted to join the Army after the central government introduced the temporary recruitment scheme called Agniveer, unlike in the past when poor farmers would send their children to the Army.

“Now they have introduced Agniveer, with no facilities like pensions, shaheed status, canteen, protection given to well-trained Army jawans… They are weakening the Indian Army. They have also sold public sector units to 22 arabpatis. Earlier the arms and ammunition were manufactured by public sector firms like HAL. Now they have taken all the contracts from the public sector and given them to private companies like Reliance Defence and Adani Defence. HAL aircraft had performed well during the war with Pakistan,” he said.

The BJP government is “closing each and every door for small traders, farmers, labourers even as 22 people continuously get their shares from every sector, ” he said. “This weakens our country and you have to fight for your rights,” he added.

Gandhi skipped his Songadh tour and returned to Surat airport, from where he flew to Delhi in a private aircraft. Sources said the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra would continue in Maharashtra on Tuesday.