Congressional leader says there has been ‘total seizure of institutions’ in India
Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday questioned the silence of the US establishment on what is happening in India.
Mr. Gandhi made these comments in an interactive virtual conversation with former US diplomat Nicholas Burns of the Harvard Kennedy School.
In the hour-long interaction that had questions from students, the congressional leader spoke on a variety of topics including the economy, foreign policy, and national politics, including farmer protests and ongoing elections.
Speaking about the role of being an opposition leader, he said there had been a “massive seizure of institutions” in India.
“I don’t hear anything from the American establishment about what is happening in India. If you are saying association of democracies, I mean what is your opinion about what is happening here, “Gandhi said to end his conversation.
“I fundamentally believe that the United States is a profound idea. The idea of freedom as encapsulated in your Constitution is a very powerful idea, but you have to defend that idea. That is the real question, ”he added.
EVM incident
Mentioning the incident of an electronic voting machine (EVM) being transported in the car of a BJP candidate in the Assam elections, Gandhi claimed that nothing was mentioned about it in the national media.
“There is a wholesale capture of the institutional framework of this country. There is an absolute financial and media dominance that the BJP has. It is not just the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Nationalist Congress Party are not winning elections, ”he said.
“To fight the elections, I need institutional structures, I need a judicial system that protects me, I need a media that is reasonably free, I need financial parity, I need a whole set of structures that really allow me to operate a political party. I don’t have them, ”Mr. Gandhi added.
The congressional leader said that when institutions did not fulfill their functions, people were forced to opt for “mass action” and cited the continuous protests of farmers as an example.
When asked what his political priority would be if he became Prime Minister, Gandhi said he would move away from a growth-oriented economy to an employment-oriented economy.
“I’m not interested in 9% economic growth if I don’t see employment figures next to it,” Gandhi said.
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