Congress protégé Rahul Gandhi has dropped yet another pearl of wisdom during his ongoing four day trip to the United Kingdom and Germany. According to the legendary political strategist and thinker Rahul Gandhi, US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were elected due to lack of jobs in the country. The Congress president Rahul Gandhi must have suffered from the bouts of amnesia once again as he forgot that prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections which PM Modi won, the Congress led UPA coalition was in power for two consecutive terms. From 2004 to 2014, Congress had stayed in power at the centre with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister, though the public and the media alike contested this by stating that it was Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi who in reality called the shots in the government. If there was indeed a period of ‘joblessness’ in between 2004 and 2014 as cited by Rahul Gandhi, then Congress directly is to blame for it.
Let’s analyze Rahul Gandhi’s claims:-
Rahul Gandhi was interacting with the Indian Journalists’ Association in London, when he made this statement which could easily be seen as an attack on the Congress. Rahul Gandhi was trying to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) together when he said, “People support populist leaders like Mr Trump and Mr Modi because they are angry that they don’t have a job. Instead of solving this problem these leaders ride on that anger. They damage the country by this.”
Being a ‘populist’ leader is by no means an easy feat in itself, politics especially in India is quite a tricky sport to play. While PM Modi is being labelled as just a ‘populist’ leader by Rahul, something the Congress desperately want him to become, Rahul also forgot that he was in fact the face of Congress when it lost in 2014. Rahul’s addition to the list made the defeat even more lopsided than it would have been had a non-Nehru-Gandhi candidate been propped up as the contender for the PM post by the Congress. His party’s dynastic ties with the Nehru-Gandhi family forced him to continue in the political sphere.
Rahul also forgot that during the 2013-2017 period, net job creation was 22.1 million which is significantly higher than the jobs created in between years 2004-04 and 2011-12. The data revealed by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation shows that a healthy 7 million jobs have been created in the country in 2017. The EPFO currently has 171.4 million members which is higher than the figure in March 2014 by 11.8 million. Increase in the pace and network of roads and infrastructure under the BJP rule has alone added more than 3 to 5 million jobs in the country. If joblessness indeed were an issue then the fall of Congress led UPA II government in 2014 is the only consequence of it. The GDP growth in 2013-14 was 6.6%, while it increased to 7.2% in 2014-15 under just one year of PM Modi led BJP rule. Even though the GDP rate received a hit during the demonetisation phase but it has recovered significantly since then and the figures for March 2018, i.e. FY 2017-18 stood at 6.74%. The projected GDP growth rate for 2018 is once again set to cross 7% easily as India is overtaking all the other countries in the list of world’s fastest growing major economy.
Rahul Gandhi still has a lot to learn and his antics in conferences and media interviews will sooner than later force his party into more troubles for the years to come.