Opposition leader Gandhi calls for India to be 'a fair country'

Rahul Gandhi, India’s leading opposition figure, called for a future India where all population groups are represented in government, and a new manufacturing model that is prepared to meet 21st century economic challenges from neighboring China.

“Ninety percent of India doesn’t have representation,” he said at the Club Headliner Newsmaker. Ninety percent of India is either tribal, lower caste, Dalit, or minority, he said. “Their participation in the country is lacking,” he said.

The leader of the Indian National Congress said, “The basic question for me: Is India fair? Even before [India’s] independence, we felt India should be a fair country.” 

Gandhi’s coalition in Parliament, is committed to increasing representation of the lower castes across government. The Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance now holds 234 seats, just 30 short of a majority after this spring’s largest election turnout in history: 950 million voters.

“If I could make India even slightly fairer, I’d feel successful,” Gandhi said.

He said that at the management and CEO level of India's top 200 corporations, “you won’t find anyone from the lower castes. It’s the same with the media, the columnists and the social influencers. It’s the preserve of the upper caste.”

He said he believes politics in India “very dramatically changed in 2014. We entered a phase of politics we hadn’t seen in India before: Aggressive, attacking the foundation of our democratic structure. And so it’s a tough fight, it’s been a good fight and personally of course it has changed me.”

He was asked what inspired him to journey across India on foot, then by car.

“That was the only way left for the opposition in our country," he said. The instruments that normally work in democracy just were not working. The media was not working, the courts were not working, nothing was working…and literally the only way was to go directly to the people of India.”

“There is an ideological war taking place in India,” Gandhi said. He said his party was inclusive, fairer and more democratic, while the ruling Bharati Janata Party  led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was repressive, monopolist and divisive.

In his call for a new economic model that would reexamine manufacturing and production from a 21st century perspective in a democratic, free society, he said he envisioned a strategic partnership with the United States.

Gandhi was disqualified from Parliament last year and sentenced to prison for criticizing Modi. India’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling, returning Gandhi to Parliament, and this spring he was re-elected.

Describing the India-U.S. relationship as key for both countries, he called for a long-term strategic vision that reflected  values of peace, nonviolence, cooperation and harmony.

“Our biggest strategic asset is our democracy, and it’s not just ours," he said. "It’s a global good."