Economy’s growing but wealth is not distributed: Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: India’s economy is growing, but the wealth is getting concentrated in a few hands, and the challenge of unemployment continues, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in an interaction with some students of Harvard University.

The former Congress president shared on Saturday on X a video of the interaction held on December 15 and said, “My advice to all students: true power comes from connecting with people, listening deeply to what they’re saying, and being kind to yourself.”

Asked about India’s economic growth in the last 10 years during the interaction, the Congress leader said, “When you talk about economic development, you have to ask the question of whose interest it is.”

“The question to ask is, what is the nature of that growth and who is benefiting from it? Right next to the figure of growth in India, you have the figure of unemployment in India. So India’s growing, but the way it’s growing is by massively concentrating wealth on very few people,” he said.

“We are operating on a debt sort of model, and we are no longer producing. The real challenge in India is: how do we set up a production economy that is able to give large numbers of people jobs? We have two or three businesses that are pretty much entire businesses,” he said.

“We have Mr. Adani. Everybody knows he is directly connected to the prime minister. He owns all our ports, airports, and infrastructure! With that kind of concentration, you will get growth, but you will not get any distribution,” he said.

Asked why this has not translated into an electoral outcome or mobilization of people, Gandhi said there is a massive mobilization, but there is a requirement for an “infrastructure to fight an election.”.

“You need a fair media, a fair legal system, a fair election commission, access to finance, and institutions that are neutral. Imagine a United States where the IRS, the FBI, and their full-time jobs are destroying the lives of the opposition. So that’s the paradigm we’re in. I didn’t walk 4,000 kilometers because I like walking 4,000 kilometers. I walked 4,000 kilometers because there was no other way to get our message across,” he said, referring to his Bharat Jodo Yatra.

“Even my social media is fully capped. I’ve got a shadow ban 24/7. My Twitter’s under control, my YouTube is under control, and I’m not alone—the entire opposition. I don’t think India is running a free and fair democracy anymore,” he said.