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Soni Mishra
Soni Mishra

RAHUL AT PRINCETON

Anger building up in the country due to unemployment: Rahul Gandhi

PTI9_20_2017_000048B Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Nobel Laureate Duncan Haldane, Professor of Physics at the Princeton University, and telecom expert Sam Pitroda at the University in New Jersey | PTI

Unemployment has emerged as the central aspect of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he articulates the broad contours of his party's vision to take on the BJP-led NDA government.

At Princeton, where he had an interaction with students today, the Congress Vice President said that anger is building up in the country because of unemployment. He said Modi was voted in by the people because they felt he would be able to provide jobs, but he has been unable to do it. Rahul had emphasised in his interactions at both the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University, the issue of unemployment, posting it as the biggest failure of Modi.

“There is anger building up in India right now. We can sense it. So to me the challenge is how to solve the job problem in a democratic environment... And frankly, the Congress party was unable to do it. That's why Mr Modi came. But Mr Modi is unable to do it,” Rahul said.

He charged Modi with diverting from the issue and pointing a finger somewhere else instead of acknowledging the problem of unemployment and resolving it.

He said that providing people with jobs is going to be the biggest challenge in the next decade. “30,000 people are coming into the job market every day. And 450 jobs are being created every day. That to me is the central problem,” he said.

He looked at the Make in India project through the prism of job creation, saying he liked the concept but felt that the targeting should be different. He said Modi was focusing on big businesses, whereas the focus should be on small and medium businesses as they are the ones that will generate jobs. “I think the Make in India idea is a good idea. And I think if that idea is implemented well it is a powerful idea. I would think about it slightly differently,” Rahul said.

Another issue that Rahul highlighted was the alleged alienation of certain groups under the present dispensation. “There is a belt of a 100 million tribal people. Today they do not feel comfortable with the vision (of the Modi government). There are a number of states in India which don't want a single vision forced down their throat. There are minority communities, they don't feel they are part of the vision. So to me that's where the real danger is,” he said.

As he takes over as Congress President soon, Rahul, in response to a question said a large part of what the party would do would be to come out with a vision for the next 10 years. This vision, he said, will focus on areas such as creation of jobs, agriculture, education and healthcare. He said the vision would be created in a bottom up manner in consultation with experts and stakeholders. “I believe that an alternative vision is also placed on the table,” he said.

Exuding comfort in placing himself as a leadership alternative to Modi, Rahul, who at the Berkeley interaction had stated that he was ready to be Congress President and even PM candidate, elaborated at Princeton on what his approach would be to a number of issues. For example, he said that he would want the MPs and MLAs to have greater say in law making.

“What I would like to push forward is a transformation of the Lok Sabha, transformation of the Vidhan Sabha. I would like to see an India where members of parliament, members of legislative assembly are actually involved in some of these processes,” he said.

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