It’s dearth of jobs that created leaders like Modi and Trump: Rahul

Amid reports of him finally taking over the party, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s intellectual credentials were showcased on Wednesday through an interaction with an Ivy League audience in the US.

Rahul, in his conversation with scholars at Princeton University, underlined mass frustration and anger due to unemployment as the most critical factor leading to election of “leaders like Narendra Modi and Donald Trump”.

He said the Congress’s failure in creating jobs brought Modi and the BJP to power in India in 2014.

While Rahul has been conducting similar discussions in university campuses across the US during his ongoing two-week-long tour, the chorus within the Congress about him taking over as party president has grown louder. On Wednesday, former Union Minister Salman Khurshid said Rahul’s ascension would give an “adrenaline shot” to the Congress.

Boost to party

While the buzz in the Congress is that Rahul will take over as early as next month, Khurshid said: “It (Rahul’s elevation) is also in many ways important organisationally because it gives a special push…it gives an adrenaline shot to the party. And then every time there is a change of guard as it were, in any organisation in any country, it gives fresh hope.” Sonia Gandhi would, however, continue to play an important role in the Congress, Khurshid added.

Meanwhile, Rahul, who has hitherto been described as a reluctant politician and unwilling to take over as Congress president, seemed more willing and comfortable in his Princeton interaction to assign the role of the top leader to himself.

Answering a question about which one of Modi’s new schemes he would appreciate, he said: “I like the ‘Make in India’ concept but they are not targeting whom they should. I would do it differently. My implementation and focus would be slightly different…

“PM Modi feels large businesses should be targeted. I feel medium and small companies should be targeted. This is where the jobs are going to come from.”

Discussing the rise of populist leaders, Rahul said: “I think, the central reason why Mr Modi rose and to an extent why Mr Trump came, is the question of jobs in India and in the United States. There’s a large part of our populations that simply does not have jobs and cannot see a future. They are feeling pain. And they have supported these type of leaders.”

He said another problem is that nobody is viewing unemployment as an issue. “I do not know Trump. I won’t go there. But certainly our Prime Minister is not doing enough (in creating jobs),” said the Congress leader.

Rahul has repeatedly raised the issue of joblessness during his meetings with experts, business leaders and Congressmen in the US.

“Currently, we are not producing enough jobs. About 30,000 new youngsters are joining the job market every single day and yet the government is only creating 500 jobs a day. And this doesn’t include the massive pool of already unemployed youngsters,” he had said in his earlier address at the University of California in Berkeley.

At Princeton, Rahul said India needs to transform itself to compete with China and for that the people require jobs.

“Those same people who got angry with us because we couldn’t deliver on those 30,000 jobs (a day) are going to get angry with Mr Modi. The central question is resolving that problem.

“My main issue with Mr Modi is that he diverts that issue and points the finger somewhere else instead of saying — listen we have a problem,” he said.

“There is anger building up in India right now. We can sense it. So to me the challenge is how to solve that job growth problem in a democratic environment,” he said.

“So we have to first accept it as a problem. Then we have to unite and try to solve it. Right now, nobody is even accepting it as a problem.”

The second issue that he delved into at length was polarisation on caste and communal lines.

He said the politics of polarisation is a central challenge in India and some sections of the society, including the minority communities and tribal people, do not feel a part of the ruling BJP’s vision.

“In the 21st century, if you leave some people out of your vision, you are asking for trouble. New ideas would come, new different visions would develop.

So, to me, the central challenge in India is the politics of polarisation where you pit one community against another and you create spaces for other people to come in,” Rahul said.

“There is a belt of 100 million tribal people who do not feel comfortable with the vision (of the BJP).

“There are a number of States in India which don’t want a single vision forced down their throats. There are minority communities, they do not feel that they are the part of the vision. So that’s where the real danger is.”

India’s strength has always been its ability to embrace people, he said. Disruption of harmony “is the central risk that India is facing,” he said.

“India lives in a volatile neighbourhood. And if we alienate our own people, that creates space for people to do mischief. I do not need to name who those people are, but it opens up space for them,” Rahul said.

“Leaving hundreds of millions of people outside that vision is not a good idea, because other people will start to create problems.”