Rahul Gandhi invokes China to attack Govt on jobs, border security

Even several Congress allies have been uncomfortable with Gandhi’s unrelenting combativeness in the House. Incidentally, the most divisive of those issues, Gautam Adani, hardly figured in Gandhi’s speech Monday.

Gandhi’s 45-minute address essentially could be split into two parts. If the first was his nuanced attack on the government over unemployment, the second was on more expected lines – caste census, “threats” to Constitution and Constitutional institutions, and in the same thread, “irregularities” in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

The new point Gandhi made was the indication that the Opposition does not have faith in the process of selection of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). Gandhi, as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, is a member of the Prime Minister-headed panel which selects the CEC and Election Commissioners.

“In a few days, I am going to go to the (panel’s) meeting. There is going to be Mr Amit Shah and Modiji and me. Two to one. Why am I even going?… I am going to the meeting only to certify what Modiji and Amit Shahji are going to say.”

Earlier, the CEC used to be chosen by the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice, Gandhi said. “The Chief Justice was removed… If the Chief Justice was there, there could be a discussion… The Chief Justice and the Leader of the Opposition could say no… So there seems to be a calculated strategy.”

The Congress leader repeatedly projecting his speech as one that could be made by a President under the INDIA bloc was interesting given the churning within the Opposition alliance. In the Delhi Assembly elections, for example, the Congress stands isolated, with many INDIA constituents behind the Aam Aadmi Party.

Focusing on unemployment and youth, Gandhi said: “The first thing in front of us – something I am sure the Prime Minister and pretty much everybody in this room will accept – is that even though we have grown, we have grown fast… are still growing… we are growing slightly slower now. A universal problem is that we have not been able to tackle the problem of unemployment.”

Striking another reconciliatory note, he said: “Neither the UPA government nor today’s NDA government has given a clear-cut answer to the youth on employment. I don’t think anybody in this room will disagree with me. I will give a little statistic for the Prime Minister… something I would agree with directionally. The Prime Minister proposed the Make in India programme… A good idea… We saw the statutes, we saw the functions, we saw the so-called investments. The result is right in front of me.”

Manufacturing had fallen from 15.3% of the GDP in 2014 to 12.6%, Gandhi said. “That is the lowest share of manufacturing in 60 years. I am not even blaming the Prime Minister because it would not be fair to say he didn’t try… But it is pretty clear that he failed.”

While it may have been his first such statement in Parliament, Gandhi has earlier too said that the UPA government’s record on job creation was not satisfactory. Addressing students at Princeton University in 2017, he said he could sense “anger building up in India right now” over this. “Frankly the Congress party was unable to do it. That is why Modi came. But Modi is unable to do it.”

Gandhi then talked about the government’s bid to boost consumption as an alternative to jump start the economy, via income tax relief in the Union Budget. Again, he started with a compliment by saying that every government since 1990 has done a “decent job” in handling consumption.

However, he added, the government had failed in organising production, and linked it to China. “Essentially… we have handed over the organisation of production to the Chinese,” he said. Showing his mobile phone, he said while it mentioned ‘Made in India’, all the components were made in China and the phone was only assembled in India.

Describing the President’s address to Parliament as “a laundry list” of the Modi government’s programmes, he said an INDIA government’s President would focus on production. “Because if we do not focus on production, we continue to focus on consumption, we will run huge deficits, we will increase inequality and eventually we will run into a serious problem – social problem because of unemployment… If you look at the numbers in jail, the numbers we are spending on internal security… police forces… they are all rising. Everybody understands that social tension is on the rise in India,” he said.

In 2022, along similar lines, Gandhi had warned that India was sitting on “a powder keg”. “We have massive levels of polarisation, huge unemployment… massive concentration of wealth… There is going to be a mass upsurge,” he said.

The Congress leader suggested that India ride the clean energy wave like it had done the computer revolution, developing expertise in software.

Gandhi said an INDIA bloc government would make the youth excited about “mobility revolution”, “start teaching our children about batteries, about electric motors”. China had a 10-year lead on India in this space, he said.

“The second thing we would do is ensure that our banking system is not captured by two or three companies that basically do not allow you to build a production system,” he said.

What drew instant protests from the Treasury Benches was Gandhi’s statement while talking about the foreign policy an INDIA government would follow, saying: “When we talk to the US, we would not send our Foreign Minister to invite our Prime Minister to his coronation. We will not send him three or four times…

‘please invite our prime minister’. Because if we had a production system and if we were working on these technologies, the American President would come here and invite the Prime Minister.”

In a statement on X, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described Gandhi’s claim as “falsehood”, saying: “At no stage was an invitation in respect of the PM discussed. It is common knowledge that our PM does not attend such events.” He said that Gandhi’s “lies” may be intended politically but “damage the nation abroad”.

He linked even the border tensions with China to China’s rise as a manufacturing hub. “People think wars are fought between armies and their weapons, but the fact is that wars are fought by industrial systems… China has an industrial system which is far stronger and bigger than our industrial system and that is why they have the guts to come inside this country.”

With the government focusing on Artificial Intelligence, Gandhi said that without data, AI is “absolutely meaningless”. “Every single piece of data that comes out of the production system in the world – the data used to make phones, electric cars, electronics – is owned by China. And the consumption data is owned by the US. In China, the consumption data is owned by China, but in India, companies like Google, Facebook, Instagram, X, they own our consumption data.”

Moving on to caste census, Gandhi referred to the caste survey conducted by the Congress-led Telangana government, and said: “Almost 90 per cent of Telangana is either Dalit, Adivasis, backward or minorities. I am convinced that is the story across the country.”

Central to any new development paradigm is the architecture of a new paradigm, he added. “And that architecture can only be built once the caste census is placed on this table.”