 Rahul Gandhi, welcome. Welcome to Cornell campus. I wish we could have done it in-person welcome, but that is not allowed for, so welcome to our campus. I have to say that I so seldom do political conversations, though this time it is going to be an informal university-style conversation. I was wondering what the reaction would be, but generally it's been so positive. People writing in to me, wanting to hear and generally on a high that it gives me a high that we are doing this event. I want to, we will range over a set of topics. It's billed as a conversation, but the Cornell faculty and students, if they have to hear me yet again for too long, they will switch off and go. So I'm going to push most of these at the conversation to you. I want to begin by talking a little bit about democracy, as was just now pointed out in the introductory remarks. This is a matter of global concern, of concern in India as well, where you're sitting. People all over are pointing out that democracy is eroding the sort of space that we had of speech, of media, of public debate, that that is getting cramped and voices are getting muzzled. Several years ago, seven, eight years ago, a former president of Cornell, Hunter Rawlings, had told me something which was stuck in my head. We were celebrating democracy, freedom of speech and Hunter said, you know, I feel that India is among the world's top one or two countries in terms of freedom of speech, the space for public debate, open criticism. And you know, coming from an American, I mean, Americans do take pride in America's open space to say that India is right at the top, made me feel very good. And that was not just me. We all used to celebrate the space. Given this concern, I would like to start by bringing you in, is this of concern to you? You are there on the ground, that voice is being muzzled, public debate, and in the end, muzzling debate has a fallout on the economy, on how the country is doing in general, we will come back to the economy. I'm an economist, I will push you a bit into that later on. But on democracy, I want your words, what's happening? Is there hope? How do you feel about the situation in India? I mean, of course, there's hope. But it's much deeper than muzzling debate. Muzzling debate is a symptom, it's one element of it. Modern democracies function because there is an institutional balance in a country. Institutions that are independent, that operate independently. That independence is being attacked in India. So there is one now one big mother institution called the RSS that is penetrating all Indian institutions. It's not a single one that is not under attack and it's systematically done. And you can, the judiciary, the press, the bureaucracy, election commission, every single institution is systematically being filled by people who have a particular ideology and belong to a certain institution. So that's, I would not say eroding, I would say strangling. And that is what is happening. As a politician, I didn't really appreciate this five, seven years ago. But as a politician, I actually can only do my job if I have institutional support. I get support from the judiciary, I get support from the election commission, I get support from a whole number of institutions that actually protect the conversation, the debate. If I don't have that support, I literally can't do my job. And frankly, I didn't, I didn't realize how profound this is until I'm actually faced with it. I'll give you, I'll give you examples. I mean, in debates in parliament, the mic is shut off. I mean, that's the extent of it, right? So we are not allowed to speak in parliament. We don't have recourse with the courts. We are sort of having the RSS BJP combined has this massive financial advantage, 10 is to 120 is to one advantage. Businesses are told, listen, you cannot support the opposition. So it's a full scale assault on the democratic space. Yeah. And I mean, that, as you're saying, one did not appreciate India's strength till it begins to the strangling happens. Because five, seven years ago, I mean, I would really see that it's such a vibe vibrancy in the country and gave us one thing, you know, I used to wonder, it always used to be something that I used to wonder, how does a Mubarak win an election with 97% of the vote? This was something I was always curious about. And I used to think, okay, they just packed the polling votes. Quite by coincidence, I ended up in a conference once of the in Egypt, they invited me. And in that conference, I was struck that in a political conference, there were judges sitting next to me. I was just talking to me, I was like, why is this judge sitting in a political conference? And at that point, I never understood it. Right. But what it had, what was happening there was there was only one institution. And all other institutions were just pretend institutions captured by that one institution. And that is what we are facing today in India. There is only one institution. I mean, today, members of parliament came from Manipur. And they said, look, we have a governor there. You know, and she just doesn't do her job. She doesn't think she's a constitutional post. She thinks she's a ideological political post. And, you know, there's nothing we can do, we just go there and then we come back. Pondicherry, the government went, the lady who was put in charge over there, completely subverting the democratic process openly, not allowing bills to pass, not allowing stuff to move simply because she belongs to the RSS. I mean, that's, that's the attack. Yeah. I mean, this if this continues, I mean, it's it's the loss to India. I mean, India actually pride is not a good thing, but this was one dimension in which we felt proud about India. And it will be sad to see if this goes. Let me bring in one critical comment about the Congress party. People very often say that there isn't enough internal democracy in there. I do understand that actually democracy is important at a national level. That is what we want. But since the question does arise about internal democracy, I want you to say what your thoughts are. Is that a fair criticism? Is it difficult? Go ahead. You're speaking to the person who has been pushing this stuff. In the Congress party for a decade. I'm the person who pushed elections in the youth organizations, pushed elections in the student organizations, got serious beating in the press for that. I was literally crucified for doing elections. Right. I was attacked by my own by my own party people. So I'm the first person that says, look, democratic elections within parties absolutely critical, but I got a question for you. It's interesting to me that this question is not asked about any other party. Nobody asked the question, why is there no internal democracy in the BJP? No one asked the question, why is there no internal democracy in the BSP? Nobody asked the question, why is there no democracy in the Samajwadi party? But they asked the question about the Congress. There's a reason. We are an ideological formation. We are an ideological party. And our ideology is the ideology of the Constitution. It is the ideology of equality. So yes, it is, I think it is more important for us to be democratic. And okay, if others are not, well, that's fine. But for us, as the institution that fought for independence, that gave India the Constitution, I think it is critical that we are democratic and have democratic processes. I'm greatly appreciative of the democratic roots that have been built in the country. There was one blot on it. I don't know how you feel about that 1975 to 77, the emergency. But that was two years. It's gone. I'm very curious how you look back and think of that. I think that was a mistake. Absolutely, that was a mistake. And my grandmother said this. It's fascinating. You're saying this because, I mean, I did think that that was dreadful. It should not have happened, the emergency. One thing very similar, what you said your grandmother said to you, with the former president of India, Pranab Mukherjee, my last conversation with him, this was a few months before he passed away. I asked him, that since you've been so close to Mrs., you were so close to Mrs. Gandhi, the calling of the election at the end of the two years of the emergency that Mrs. Gandhi called, was it hubris, arrogance of an authoritarian leader that I will win? I want to demonstrate that. Or was it that she was beginning to have self-doubt? I asked Pranab Mukherjee, since you were so close. And Pranab Mukherjee told me that actually, I can tell you, I have direct conversational evidence. She began to feel that she might lose, but she wanted to put that to test, had a fair election and actually lost. So in some sense, having made that huge mistake, she rectified that and brought back the democratic institution. So it's sort of your preferred sort of- It was very different though. Yeah. And there's a fundamental difference between what happened in the emergency and it was wrong and what is happening now. The Congress party at no point attempted to capture India's institutional framework. And frankly, the Congress party doesn't even have that capability. Our design doesn't allow us that, even if we want to do it, we can't do it. The RSS is doing something fundamentally different. They are actually filling the institutions with their people. So look, even if we defeat the BJP in an election, we are not going to get rid of their people in the institutional structure. Our Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, just before he was overthrown, had a conversation with me. He says, listen, my senior bureaucrats won't listen. They are RSS people. I tell them to do something, they don't do it. So it's fundamentally different what's going on. Well, yeah, fingers crossed, I'll push you a bit later about what would you do if you have the chance. Rahul, but since we are in history, I want to ask you a somewhat personal question. If you don't want to answer, this is your father's assassination. This for me, of course, it looms big in my head, 1991, May, right? I hope I'm getting that right. You were 20 or 21 years old. I just want to know. 20, yes. How did that affect you? Did you feel like throwing in or did you feel the resolve that you want to take up the cudgels? And I'm asking this also. The personal question is always awkward to ask, but I'm asking also, because today is a time of suffering, very different kind. There are people handling losses. So there is also something that people would want to hear another person who had to take on a maybe in a very different circumstance, a very difficult situation. I'm curious. I mean, you know, at one level, my father was assassinated and it's violent and it's sort of painful. But at another level, it's losing a parent. So many people lose parents. For me, at that time, I saw my father fighting forces that were much bigger. And I sort of sensed before my father died that this was not going to end well. So what was worse for me was actually seeing my father walking towards his death. That was much worse than the death in fact. In fact, when my father died, they told me on the phone, I said, oh yeah, okay, so I know now it's happened. So it was almost a fair complete that, okay, it had to happen. It's happened now. But the disturbing aspect was watching him fighting these forces and knowing as a son that he's not going to come out of this thing. It also shaped me fundamentally. I didn't realize it then. Certain things my father said to me just got sort of stamped in my head. So I remember once my father told me in a conversation that, you know, you must really think about things deeply. And I didn't realize it then, but that just, it stuck. So I would spend quite a lot of time thinking about stuff and that was one aspect. Other aspect was going to the United States. There was a security threat there. I had to sort of live under particular circumstances, security and stuff. So I had these long periods of where I was on my own in a sense. So I could develop the capacity of reflection on my own, you know, just sort of going for walks and thinking about stuff. So that was a positive. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I feel Look, I tell you, it was very, very painful for me. But it also gave me many, many gifts that I would never have got. It made me understand violence. It made me understand the other. So I remember it's a strange thing. I saw my father's killer lying on the beach in Sri Lanka. And I felt very, very bad for him. I just was very upset for him. I was like, you know, I just saw him that that's my father. He's somebody else's father. There's somebody else looking at him right now. The same way I looked at my father. Right. So when someone talks violence, I sort of sit quietly and say, you don't actually understand it. That's why you're so enamored by it. It's never actually struck you. And when it does, you'll have a different view on it. So, so that that type of thing does exist. Yeah. Positive and negative. I mean, when my Prabhakaran died, I picked up the phone, I called my sister and said, Piyanka, this is very strange. This is what I said, you know, I'm feeling very bad that I should be feeling happy about this. And I'm just disturbed that why have they, why the humiliating this man like this? What is the reason for humiliating him like this? And my sister says to me, you know, I'm feeling exactly the same way. Now, saying that to somebody who hasn't dealt with violence, you won't understand it. You'd be like, you know, good that he's dead. But to me, that doesn't work. Having faced nothing similar. I actually understand because for me, empathy is such an important human quality. And I feel what you said just now will be reassuring to people in different situations who have had to take on. And as you said, just the death of a near person. I mean, even if it's by another cause, a natural cause, it is that for a couple of years, I was angry. I was angry with what I thought, who I thought killed my father. Right. And it was, I didn't realize it, but it was a weight on my shoulders. It literally was a weight on my, this anger was a weight on my shoulders. And then one day I was like, well, why are you carrying this around? There's no reason for you to carry this around. Put it down. And literally I just put it down. And that was it. I sort of understood then that actually one person didn't kill my father. Set of forces combined. And my father happened to be fighting for a cause that was against those forces. So if you view it like that, then compassion is automatic. Thank you. I will inflict some of my academic writings on you, which actually echo a very similar viewpoint. Thank you very much for this. I'm changing topic. We want to cover a lot. I want to get into a little bit of foreign policy issues around in the current, this the global situation, very difficult. US has done a turnaround for the better with Biden and Harris here. But the world is shredded. I mean, when I look at what's happening in Myanmar, it's just painful to even watch and it's happening in Yemen all over the world. Two sets of questions. I have foreign policy and then you take on how what's your view on these dreadful things happening in other places like Myanmar? I feel, and this is very easy as an academic, I feel that on these the stance should be moral. For Biden, the stance should be a moral stance where human rights are dismissed, people are treated badly, you have to speak up no matter what your immediate national interest. So that I want to know your views and neighboring countries, regions, Myanmar is a good example, but from anywhere. The other one is a bigger question of sort of geopolitics. India, China, United States on two sides, China literally next to us, United States sort of not geographically next to us, but the big power. Where does India come in? How would you sort of position India? What are the risks in this space? Your thought, I'm leaving it as a very open ended question. Look, of course, things like Myanmar, I'm nobody to sort of say what Mr. Biden, President of the United States should do, that's not my place. But of course, there is a place for ethics, and one has to keep that in mind. But power also has its role, it plays out. So there is always a balance between those forces. Also, the ethics question is interesting one, because it's always ethics from whose perspective. And that's something that, if you go into a little bit of depth, you suddenly find what is ethical for one person is bombing someone else's house. But we won't go into that. It's always the perspective of the person and how reflective you are on your own perspective. On the India, China, United States, look, a superpower is arising. There's just no question about that. And the rise of that superpower is moving things around, shifting things. And the hope is that the two superpowers do not collide, because if the two superpowers collide, then we are in very serious trouble. So hopefully the two superpowers that are arising, manage the situation, have the maturity to manage the situation and find a way of coexisting with each other. China is clearly on a trajectory where it is going to become a superpower, unless there's a collapse in their political structure, which seems unlikely. So that is something we're going to have to deal with. And look, as a country that is neighboring China and close to the United States, superpowers like to fight. Superpowers like to collide. And they don't like to collide on their own territory. So the nightmare for India is that we become the battlefield of that collision. And that's something that good politics in India, good foreign policy in India, has to maneuver around. I mean, countries have been destroyed because of this superpower collision. Completely destroyed. Millions of people have been killed. So that's not somewhere where you want to go. And that is going to require wisdom on the part of the United States, wisdom on the part of the Chinese and wisdom on the part of India. I mean, there's a little bit of hope. I'll give you a hypothetical question. If you were Prime Minister of India, and you're confronting roughly this world, it's no longer Trump. I don't think you would get along with him, but with the Biden-Harris team, where I feel you would get along. What would your position be? Would you distance yourself? I find this very difficult because I even conceiving of these situations, because on the one hand, there are, there is global democracy, rules of play. On the other hand, you have to be realistic. Power is important. As you say, what would you do if you were? The first thing is, the first thing is, I can see that there is a clear Chinese vision. I don't agree with elements of it, but it's there. And the vision is terrestrial global vision. It's a modern silk road with a nervous system in it. And it's a global vision. The United States requires a global vision. We are a friend of the United States, but I don't see that global vision. I see a United States, which is looking inside. I see United States, much like India, that is dealing with its own internal contradictions, internal tensions. But I don't see the United States, I used to see 30, 40, 50 years ago that used to transform, do transform a tree actions. So that's one element that is going to be required. And I think India has a role there in creating a vision, creating a strategy. It's not necessary a confrontational strategy. It can be a coexisting strategy, but the strategy has to be there. And currently the strategy is not there. The conversation that the United States has with India is basically a conversation about the military aspects of it. That's not going to cut it. That's not a vision. That's not even a strategy. That's at best a small piece of a strategy. So that is something that that conversation has to begin. At the same time, I do believe that India has to have good relations with as many people as it can. That's just, I mean, I would try to look at a world where we are talking, having a conversation, maybe disagreeing, even if you have two or three different visions out there, but there needs to be a strategic vision. And that's the part where I get, and that's huge in India. I mean, we literally do not have a strategy. We have no concept of a strategy on, I mean, I was speaking some time back to the foreign minister and, I mean, his view is that we're going into a multipolar world and we need to operate in a multipolar world. I mean, that's not a strategy. You can see that lack of strategy also in the region. I would, when I was advising the Indian government as chief economic advisor, I would feel that there should be much more trade interaction, variety of interaction in the region. And for that, India has to play a bit of a leadership role. Leadership role means inclusiveness. You are dealing and interacting, but we didn't have that strategy. See, I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I look at it, and it's a simple way to look at it. As a nation, as a person, you have a memory and you have an imagination. You can either look forward and create an imagination, or you can look backwards and talk about your memories. If you look at the political slogan of Mr. Trump, it will make America great again. Backward looking. Let's look into the past and find what we need to find to go forward. If you look at India, our entire conversation is looking in the rear view mirror. The whole debate in India, I mean, I don't partake in it, but the whole debate in India is what happened 300 years ago, what happened 700 years ago? Okay, that's all your memories. Now, tell me about your imagination. There's nothing. You cannot build a vision on a memory. You have to build a vision on an imagination. And we're so stuck in our memory right now in India that we're just talking about the past. Like them or don't like them. China has an imagination. They are looking at, they've conceptualized the world and they say, okay, this is the world that we want, and then they're going out there and building it. That's not what India is doing. India is saying, this is what the world used to be like, and we stopped there. And it's similar to the United States. I mean, I don't know, not this government, but certainly Mr. Trump was, look where we were 50 years ago. Well, where you were 50 years ago, I'm going to help you now. Doesn't matter where you were 50 years ago. Tell me where you're going now. So that is the real question and the entire politics of India has become one of memory. He did this to me. So I got to do this to him. He did that before. So I got to do this to him. And I mean, it's got to end because it's not going to give you solutions. I again, fully agree. I mean, you can't live life by correcting past wrongs and continuing to do that. You have to look further forward. You know, somebody says to me, oh, you know, the Congress party did this. And I'm like, okay, fine. We did that. Yeah. Now tell me what I should do. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about what we can do now. And that's the conversation I want to have. That's the political conversation I want to have. That's the economic conversation I want to have. But that's not what the BJP likes to do because they can't actually have that conversation. No, I can fully agree. And for United States, I actually do feel hopeful that it will be forward looking. It's going to change. And that slogan of make America great again. I used to feel that great is a spelling mistake. Your nerves can be grating that kind of make America great again. But it could now really stand the chance of some of that anyway. Foreign policy. Well, connecting with that, I want to go into that. Can I just say one thing, one other thing, Mr. Bach? You see, when you look at when you look at a make America great slogan again, or you look at the RSS vision of India, as somebody who opposes that vision, I have one would have a tendency to just brush it off. But you can't brush it off because make America great again is a reflection of the sentiment of American people. And there is a reason they have that sentiment. There is a failure that has taken place. And so you have to accept that sentiment, even though you might fight that sentiment. You see what I'm saying? So I understand where a lot of the anger in India is coming from. We are not creating jobs. So I can understand if people are not able to see a future. Anger is going to develop. But it's not going to give you a solution. So in a sense, I want to go beyond the slogan. Yeah, I actually want to use this as a segue to what you just touched on. I feel one of the reasons it's both ways. We are looking back and doing that is also hurting our present situation. And that really is showing up in the numbers and the economy. And the economy. And let me just say, since this is something that I watch, of course, very closely, the Indian economy is doing very poorly. Just no matter how you look at it. And I'm not just talking about the year 2020, when the pandemic has been savaging the global economy. Over the last five years from 2016 and a variety of statistics I have and not just me talk to any reasonable economists will tell you from being right there in terms of growth, still a emerging economy, developing economy, but in terms of growth, India was right up there all the way up to 2016. Then it started tumbling down. And the tumble down, this is a very interesting thing that has happened from 2016 to now. Every year, the growth has been less than the previous year's growth. Four steps downwards has actually never happened before in India, independent India. That there are other indicators. And for me, one of the things is it's probably doing both ways. This is what is making us look back and just glorify think about the past, don't look at our current predicament. And that focus of attention going just talk about the past is also meaning that present is being neglected. One more actually indicator I should point to because in your day to day life, you may not come across it, but as an economist, I feel very troubled, malnutrition. NFHS has just put out data for studying India from 2015 to 2019, the four year period. It's not all India as yet. They have released data for 22 states and union territories, 22 of them. But five year period over which there has been an increase in stunting height for age for children below five years. And this is of course not something that is happening to the well off, not happening to the middle classes, even lower middle classes. It's the poor. Clearly, they are suffering from malnutrition and malnutrition increasing over a five year period is a shocking development. GDP goes up, comes down, growth fluctuates. But malnutrition usually in an emerging economy, you keep improving. This is a remarkable thing in 13 states out of 22. We know that malnutrition has increased. So all this is to me a sign of grave worry. And it is also troubling me that not enough attention is being paid right now, an important piece of a number, just a number in the growth chart of 2020. India is the 164th in the ranking from the top. We were in the top three to five for several years and not just one year. For several years, the growth actually picked up. 2003 picked up and then it remained there. Doing badly. I don't want to push you. I mean, this is for others to advise and give details. But what is your thought about the economy, broad thoughts? What do you think is going wrong? Who are the people who are suffering? And shouldn't we sort of treat this as a situation where there should be immediate steps being taken to correct? Massive, massive concentration of capital and wealth. And so much concentration of capital and wealth that you're going to run into social problems. So this is going to lead to other types of costs that are going to come. Systematic attack on small and medium businesses. By the people who have managed to concentrate the capital. Demonetization. GST designed to basically destroy small and medium businesses. When I talk to shopkeepers, they say to me, Rasta Saaf kar rahe. They are cleaning the way. Removing us from the path. So a vision of India. I think the prime minister sort of copies the chebol vision where three or four or five big players sort of concentrate capital and then build the economy. India just, you just cannot do that in India. So destroying this small and medium job creation engine, which basically produces vast majority of our jobs. And then now hitting agriculture with these devastating laws, which are basically going to destroy our agricultural system. So these are the two things that are very dangerous. I think what India needs is to fire the economy using the consumption side. Demand side. And the government insists on firing the supply side. And when they fire the supply side, they don't even fire the supply side by giving it to, you know, thousands and thousands of small medium businesses. They keep giving it to the same 10 guys. So you have the sort of ridiculous situation where your entire workforce is walking back home during Corona. They're asking you for 300 rupees. And you say, no, we're not going to give you 300 rupees. I met those people. They were crying because their entire asset base was destroyed. So some of those people, their entire assets are, you know, couple of 100 rupees, couple of 1000 rupees. They just had to leave them back in Punjab and go back home. So whatever they had was gone. So you were literally putting all those people down below the poverty line and starting negative cash flow cycles for each one of them. And at the same time, you turn around, you say, we're not going to give these people bus tickets and then you give 1,50,000 crore to like the top 5, 7, 10 guys. So it is the idea. And it's an old idea in India that if you're poor, if you're not well off, you're worthless. When in fact, it's the poor people in India who are actually India's assets. They're exactly the people you should be investing in because they're the ones who are going to give you the return. So that to me is broadly the problem. Yeah, no, it's absolutely because talking to people on this, I don't have hard data. It's the small businesses, the self-employed, just absolutely devastated actually. In fact, people who have a little bit of their own plot of land, they are doing that, but the self-employed and that class is being hit very, very badly. And I do worry that if this is not attended too soon, what it will do politically and in terms of the economy. Do you have anything specific to say about the farm laws? I have taken a position that it's very unfortunate. And it's a broadly, at first sight, it looks like a move in the right direction, sort of thing that I myself would recommend. And in fact, when the laws first happened, my thought was maybe it's a move in the right direction. I got alerted to it after watching the farmers. I thought I better read what the laws are. When I read it in detail, I felt that, look, it looks right, but it's going to be devastating for the farmers. And I have openly taken a position that these laws are wrong. I don't know how involved you are in this, if you have any views. I'm involved and quite involved. Essentially, there are broadly three laws. First law destroys the concept of a farmer's market. Second law allows five or six businesses to control cereal, vegetable and fruit prices by giving them unlimited storage capacity for as long as they want. I think one businessman already owns 40% of our, of some of our cereals. So that's the scale of it. And the third law says, look, if farmer wants to contest price, he can't do it in a court law. Those are the three laws, right? So what they're going to do is, I think the Prime Minister has a vision of making agriculture more efficient. He doesn't understand that agriculture in its current form is actually providing protection to a whole bunch of people. It's providing a shock absorber to millions and millions and millions of people. It's providing a space to go when the city doesn't give them what they want. Right? And he's going to take that away. And when he takes that away, you will have people who will have nowhere to go. And then you will have social problems that you cannot imagine. And what this is basically what the farmers are saying. The farmers, if you go and you talk to them, what they're essentially saying is, look, where do we go now? There's nowhere to go. Right? If you think about the instinct, right? When Corona came, why did those millions of laborers run home? Because that was their protection. The village was their protection. I know people who were laborers in urban areas when they couldn't get a job, they went home and they could eat. Right? So it might be a subsistence field. It might be a small field, but it allowed them to eat. Now what the Prime Minister is doing, he's trying to take that thing away from them. He's saying, let the two, three top businessmen run these massive farms, etc., etc. When that guy doesn't have anywhere to go home, then you see the violence that happens in the cities. So they're not thinking these things through. It's like demonetization. They're not thinking the consequences of these things through. And the reason is they're not negotiating these things. In my political experience, when we started to do the GST, we understood immediately the complexity of it because we started negotiation. And the negotiation was warning us that, listen, you need to be careful with this thing. The BJP just said, no negotiation. We're stopping it around your throat, 12 o'clock at night. So in the Indian system, the political conversation, the political process actually shows you where the negotiation has to take place. And when you do it without the process, the cost comes to you later. So if we had done the GST, we would have had a much longer drawn out conversation. But we wouldn't have had people saying, oh my God, I can't fill this form. Yeah. That's actually, yeah, bang on point. Actually, the GST, I was involved those days. The debates and discussions they were going on, very intricate. We wanted it. In fact, Pranab Mukherjee, who has a phenomenal memory, you probably know reminded me that we had 23 meetings, proper full meetings with various groups that when we were planning that. And that was it. It is the move in the right direction, right intentions, but so poorly implemented. Again, it's been devastating for a segment of that. And somebody said to me, well, the GST idea was good, but their implementation was bad. No, actually, the idea includes the implementation. You can't say that this is a political idea or this is an economic idea. And the idea doesn't include the implementation. Because if you don't have the implementation and the idea, then what is that worth? Yeah. Very well put. I mean, that's a sentence I have used. So it's a critique of what I've said, but it's very well put. I see what you mean by including that. Yeah. If I'm going to say, I'm going to give you a GST. And then I have not factored in the implementation of that thing. Then what I'm basically telling you is I'm giving you a pipeline. Yeah. It's only when the implementation is factored in that I'm giving you the product called GST. Rahul, this has been fascinating, but I want to give a little bit of time for people to ask questions. If you want to take one or two minutes, just anything. I mean, if you were in charge of things, what would you do? Just say that. And then I want to open it to Cornell students to come in. I think for our students as well, generally, yeah. Like the United States, India needs to heal. It needs to start a conversation, general conversation, compassionate conversation within itself. And it needs to be a respectful conversation. It needs to urgently needs to stop this hateful conversation that is going on because not helping anybody, this anger, and it needs to accept that what worked between 1990 and 2012 is not working. And what the government is currently trying to do is an extension of that concept. We have to bite the manufacturing bullet. We just have to. We simply will not be able to give up our youngsters jobs if we don't bite that bullet. And we can keep coming up with this nonsense that, you know, service industry, service industry, service industry, a country of 1.3 billion people cannot be run on a service industry. It requires a manufacturing strategy. And we have to come up with it. And then we have to see what our assets are. We have a huge asset in our agricultural system. It requires reform, but it doesn't require complete destruction. So have a conversation with the farmers. Have a conversation with the small traders and reform that huge asset that India has. But be, be, be, be compassionate, be nice to, you know, each other because that's the starting point. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's just wonderful being able to talk even the negatives and the positives was just very, very good. Let's bring in, throw it open. I will need a bit of advice how we bring in the students questions. There is a question from Alekhia Mukavili, who's a student in the regional planning, doing a master's in regional planning. Daniel or whoever's helping is Alekhia, how do we switch her on? I'm no good at this. Oh, yes, I can see her. So. Hi, Mr. Gandhi. Introduce yourself one liner and then go ahead. Yeah, sure. So as Professor Basu said, I'm a second year master in regional planning candidate interested in climate adaptation. And my question for you related to that and related to what India's future strategy should be is outside of renewable energy investments, what do you think India's long term sustainable development plan should be and what should it prioritize? Well, there's a in a in a country like India, there is a political issue with discussing the environment. That's the first thing that one has to understand, which is that when you go to poor people and you say listen, please, this is what we need to do for the environment. They respond to you and say, okay, but I got my basic needs. And I need I need you to do this for me. So generating the political will to do some of these things is not as easy in India as it is in western countries. And a lot of these battles that take place, environmental battles, take place at a decentralized level, take place at a at a not at a national level, but at a local level, decentralizing power, decentralizing that conversation and allowing local structures to take those decisions, local political structures to take those decisions is very, very important. You, you will not be able to impose a lot of these decisions sitting in Delhi on states and then sitting in states on districts and down the chain. So that that's something that one has to look at. Of course, the entire movement to sort of electrics, the entire movement away from coal, that is something that you have to have a strategy for that's going to require a transformation that is going to be expensive. I think a lot of those things are opportunities. So I think if you think about them strategically, their opportunities, you can, you can do things that appear to be costly now, but actually end up end up cheaper. So I would say that broadly is how I would think about it. Thank you. Actually, I mean, there's another question coming up that I have several, the pollution problem in general, I mean, it has to be something taken on a war footing in India because affects everything, including people's health. So for example, the pollution problem in Delhi is caused by Haryana and Punjab. Now, the Haryana and Punjab burn their, their shaft, Delhi gets pollution. Haryana and Punjab, you know, so, so there is a, there is a cost there, which Haryana is causing Delhi, but Delhi has no way of sort of managing that cost. So these type of contradictions, they're there across the country. And, and eventually what it comes down to right is a political battle. There is a, there is a, there is a cost of fixing that problem in Haryana and Punjab. Haryana and Punjab says, okay, listen, pay that cost, and I'll fix the problem. So that is a negotiation. It's a political negotiation. If the Punjab chief minister suddenly says, listen, guys, I'm not going to let you burn, burn your crops. Well, then he's got a problem. Correct. Because then his farmer will say, okay, fine, you don't let us burn the crops. We won't give you a vote. So in a democratic system, you always have to superimpose the politics on it. You'll never get a solution without working through the politics. Yeah. Right. Next question is from Harman Singh Dodi against student of city and regional planning. The regional planning people are active in asking questions. Harman, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Gandhi for joining us today. And I'm originally from Chandigarh. So we know that India is going through this age of digital revolution, where new data doing technologies are coming up. And the government is also trying to incorporate them in their own policies and programs. And one such program is the smart cities mission in India. So my question is, do you think the smart cities model can help improve access to basic services like water and energy to citizens of India? Or is there more that needs to be done? I mean, the, the, well, what I see of the smart cities model, I don't see any real results coming out of that model. And I certainly haven't seen the money that is required to actually deliver something out of the smart city model. So the amount of money that is being put in, you know, to create these smart cities is tiny. It's, it's not going to create any smart cities. I think a combination of a improving infrastructure, obviously, and then broadly connecting the country, connecting the cities. I think that is something that would work. But you need to put money behind it. It's not going to work if there's no money behind it. Yeah. Thank you. Next, there's a question now coming up from Arthur Garje, a student of biology and history. Arthur, the floor is yours. Hello, Mr. Gandhi. Thank you for joining us and speaking with us today. I wanted to ask you further about what you were talking about earlier with the penetration of India's institutions. Do you think it's possible for India's institutions to act independently of majoritarian interests in the current day? And how or what changes need to be made in order to prevent this sort of penetration from happening in the future? The, what is it? The reason you're, you're penetrating these institutions is financial concentration. So you, it's a money grab. That's what's actually happening. And as this, as the RSS and its sister organizations grab more and more, more and more resources, they will start to get a reaction from the people of India. And you can see that in the farmers. If you want to look at it simply, the money is being taken out of the farmer's pocket and he's reacting and he's saying, I'm not going to let you now take this money from me. So when you see this, when you see this concentration of wealth, when you see this money being used to capture more and more institutions, right? This angers people. There is, of course, a media component right now. So the same words, same people who are capturing these institutions are also controlling the media. So, so the, the public looks and says, okay, they're sort of constantly looking at this media barrage that is coming into that. But it's going to start to pinch. The concentration of wealth is going to start to pinch. And when it starts to pinch, you'll get a reaction from people. And that that is the only way this thing is now going to get resolved. You will also then have to do a lot of damage control. You'll have to go in and say, okay, you have just put in 15 years worth of judges who the only reason I mean, if you go to pretty much any university today, the only qualification you need to be a vice chancellor is you need to be from the RSS. So imagine what that is doing to the institutional structure, to the education system. I mean, imagine if we said, listen, Mr. Basu, sorry, your only qualification is that you belong to an organization. And that's how you're going to teach at Cornell. Basically, Cornell would end right there. So a lot of repair has to be done afterwards after this, after this public reaction, which, which is going to come. Right. And, and let me tell you, it's, it's going to be very painful for India. It's not going to be easy. Yeah, I want to slip in a question related to what you were just talking about. I'm putting in the RSS spokesperson shoes. See, one thing I can see is an RSS interest to capture institutions that will do huge damage to India, but it's in their interest. But the capturing of business, three, four big businesses capturing everything and small businesses being decimated. Is that folly? Because I can't see that being an RSS. I'll tell you an RSS, a man who left the RSS came and explained this to me. And he left the RSS news very angry with them. And, you know, I don't normally meet these guys, but he said, I want to meet. So he had left RSS. So I met him. And he said, look, the innovation that has taken place is RSS used to be an organization that used to represent small shopkeepers. Yeah, he says the innovation of Narendra Modi is to take large capital and fund the RSS with it. So scale up RSS using the three, four, five, seven crony capitalists. So the RSS is the organization that is capturing the institutions. We used to fight the RSS with no problem because they didn't have money. The Gujarat model was the concept of giving them thousands of crores. That's how they suddenly got turbocharged. And so now what you have is a combination of the Prime Minister, RSS people attacking the bureaucracy, attacking our education system, attacking our exam system. So if you want to join the IAS today, you've got to go through an RSS training school. And that is combined with crony capital. So the crony capital manages the TV. The RSS manages the capture of the institutions. And by the way, WhatsApp, Facebook, these guys are also controlled in India by the BJP. So their leadership in India, the BJP, the RSS head in India is a BJP person. So it is a combination, it's teamwork between RSS and crony capitalism. It was first attempted by the way, this gentleman told me it was the first time they did it with the Prime Minister, but it failed. Then in Gujarat he basically said, look, I'm a representative of these small shopkeepers. I got nothing to do now because now the thing is directly funded by big capital. So what the crony capital is figured out is that the RSS is a sort of institution that can be used to capture the political system. And the trade is very much like in Saudi Arabia. So in Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis say, listen, you let us handle the institutional structure of Mecca and you handle the Saudis, the royal family handles the finances of the oil. So there's split. This is exactly what's happening here. So the deal is RSS, you do whatever you want with India's institutions. We will give the Prime Minister full media access, social media access. The Prime Minister will give us all the businesses we need and together we'll run the country. It's a compact. No, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you see the framework. Yeah, no, it's very cogently explained. Daniel, if I go over by five minutes, I hope that's all right. I don't want to deny questions. I can see two more coming up, Reva Fansalkar, master student at Cornell. Reva, please come in. Hi, Mr. Gandhi. Thank you so much for coming and speaking with us today. So you spoke a little bit about the importance of having a vision for the country and I feel the union budget is somehow an indicator of that. So what I want to ask you is, how would the 2021 union budget differ under your leadership than what it is right now? And what are the sort of sectors that India needs to prioritize? And I know you spoke about the economy a little bit, but if you could talk through the sort of sectors that are specified in the budget, I think that would be very interesting to hear. This budget attempts to start the economy by priming the supply side. And it primes the supply side by giving huge amount of funds to large big businesses. Okay. To me, India's challenge, central challenge is job creation. And to me, job creation is going to require two or three things. Number one, it's going to require a unlocking of the banking system, the banking system's jammed up and the banking system is monopolized by the same 5, 7, 10 chronic calculus. So it requires an unlocking of that. Second thing is we need to start allowing or getting small and medium businesses to have access to this banking system, so that they can actually start to open up small businesses, scale those businesses up. And then we need to transform agriculture. We don't need to kill agriculture. We need to transform agriculture because a large number of jobs are going to be created by our agricultural system. Food processing jobs, large number of jobs are going to be created if you transform agriculture. So I would spend a decent amount of money in transforming agriculture, assisting our farmers to become more productive and building them up and improving their efficiency. I certainly wouldn't take the entire system out of the hands, which is what the three farm laws do. And I would push these two areas strongly. I would also use technology aggressively. And then I would make sure that we are giving a social protection to people who can fall off the poverty line. So realize that a poor person who has fallen below the poverty line is not just hurting himself. He's not giving you a he's not giving you production. He's not adding to your output. So what you want to do is you want to give him a floor underneath and Mahatma Gandhi Narega is early 20th, 21st century example of that. I think there are newer examples of it. Our Nyais scheme is one. But we need to give a sense of protection to people on the lowest part of our population. So that is broadly how I would think about it. That's not to say that large businesses are not part of the equation. They're absolutely part of the equation. And they have to be supported and they have to be part of the game. My complaint is that's the only game in town today. Thank you so much. Where are you from? I'm from Mumbai. Okay. Well, there's one question coming from one of my colleagues. She's a friend and I don't want her as an enemy by denying. So though we've gone just over time, five minutes more, Durba Ghosh, Professor of History, Durba, the Florisians. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Gandhi for joining us today. It's really a great pleasure. So I'm asking the question really as a faculty member. I think as Vice Provost Wendy Wilford noted, we have a lot of students from India and I meet a lot of them in classes and in various events. They're both undergraduate and graduate. They come to Cornell to study a wide range of subjects. But when I tell them that I'm a historian, many explain that their interests in history, literature and the arts are not taken seriously in India's credible subjects of study. I don't think this is a message that's unique to India, something similar is going on here in the US and in other systems of higher education. When you began the conversation, you identified institutions as a central feature of sustaining democracy. And obviously, educational institutions are critical spaces. And I'm sure you're very aware of the ways in which higher education has been targeted in India. How would you feel about a government recommitment to higher education in India? And what would such a recommitment look like? I mean, as you said, higher education, in fact, the whole education system is being targeted. Rewriting of history, subtle rewriting of social norms, subtle attack on the ideas of the constitution, subtle attack on the ideas of equality. So these are values that India just requires. Modern India cannot exist without these values. So absolutely you need to reclaim this space. What is going on is essentially an attack on the idea of equality. And by the way, the RSS began the attack through their schools. So much like the radical Islamists used their Madarsas in Pakistan, much like that the RSS uses its schools to push a particular worldview. Nobody asked the question, where does the RSS get the money to run hundreds of thousands of schools from? These are not profitable schools. So nobody is asking the question. So absolutely, it is a capture of the Indian education system and the Indian education system is going to be taken back from the hands. It's going to require work and it's not going to be easy because a lot of their people are, once you get a job as a teacher, you're in. That's it. Then you can't be removed. So we are looking at a long problem. Can I just follow up quickly? And I say this as a parent also of college age children. So I'll just say my part of the family is the only part of the family that's permanently emigrated to the United States. So I have 20 cousins who live in India. And one of the things I hear from them is their anxiety about their children. I have anxieties about my children. They're different. The anxieties that I hear from my cousins are about the future of young people in India. You know this. India has a very young population. There's lots of opportunities that are not available in the way that they once were. So what is this kind of restructuring that you imagine look like? Essentially behind the sort of bluster. What the RSS and Narendra Modi are trying to do is once again reinforce the idea of caste on India. That's what they're doing. That's what the project is. The project is that everybody should know their space. A Dalit should know his space. A woman should know her space. And a Muslim should know his space. And a Sikh should know his space. And that's what they're doing. They're organizing space. If you look at if you listen to some of Mohan Bhagwat's talks, he talks like that. He's like we're organizing Indian society and everybody has got a space. You know and everybody's got to fit into this conceptual space that the RSS imagines. It's not a space that is not a view of space that you and me imagine, which is flat. It's a hierarchy on top of which sits Mr. Narendra Modi. Number two is Mr. Mohan Bhagwat. Number three is Mr. Amit Shah. It goes down like that. And that's what they're trying to do. Look, I'll tell you what a large part of the problem is, is that large parts of India simply won't accept it. So they will try to impose this idea and then they will get a reaction from large parts of India that just simply don't agree. So Mr. Mohan Bhagwat's framework of the world, for example, is not acceptable to the Tamils. It's simply not. It's not acceptable to the Sikhs. It's not acceptable to the Northeast. It's not acceptable to the Carolites. So they're suddenly going to find that the reaction is going to come sub-nationally and it's going to be violent. So what the Congress actually did is it stitched these groups together. I was telling, I went on a tour to Tamil Nadu and I was telling them, I was like, look, if I say that Tamil Nadu belongs to India, then I have to say that India belongs to Tamil Nadu. That's the contract. I cannot say that Tamil Nadu is India, but India is something that Tamil Nadu does not fully own. I can't say that. That's why in our Constitution, if you look, we are called a union of states. We came together. It's a negotiated settlement. We all came together and we said, we agree with this Constitution. Federal with the Constitution, a lot of those people will say, sorry, what are you doing? So they're actually destroying the country and we're fighting them. And we're fighting them with their powerful. Yeah. Thank you for your response. I'll turn it back to Professor Basu. Durbar, thank you very much. We are running out of time. What I'll do is I'm going to give you the last word with a question that has come in. So I will use that question. There were lots of questions I'm told coming on Facebook, but we don't have those on our platform. So this is only on Cornell's questions coming in. And you use that to put in any final word that you want for us. By the way, the reaction, generally, we are getting from around the world very positive. And I should also thank you. Don't worry, Mr. Basu. You will see there will be something that I have said will be twisted out of context all over the Indian newspapers and they will run it. And that's just the way it is, but I'm okay with it. Yeah, but we will inflict this program. It will come. I'll be very curious to see how that's done. The question that came from the floor is that the Congress party has done poorly, the previous elections, etc. And given that you talked about imagination, the need to look forward rather than the past, what is your vision? Are you hopeful? Is there a vision for the Congress? Gather the resistance. Gather the resistance. There is resistance across all fronts, many different types of people, many different types of ideas. The Congress party has to have the humility to absorb them, has to have the flexibility to absorb them, has to have the respect to absorb them. It has to change itself, it has to transform itself to playing that role. Remember when we started the Congress party, it was basically bringing together the resistance. We used to call it passive resistance in those days because we are not into the violent kind of resistance. And we still are not. So we will never do anything violently, anything aggressively, anything nastily, all polite, all nice. But we will bring together India's power. And so in a sense, the party has to submit itself to the Indian people. It has to open itself to the Indian people, it has to submit itself to the Indian people. And it has to be humble because it is fighting arrogance. And so that is what the Congress party has to do. And it's not an easy transformation. It's a difficult transformation. But it's in our DNA to do it. And there are a lot of people who are not happy with what's going on. So they are there. We have to be open. We have to be affectionate. And we have to carry all these forces. I actually believe that not just the Congress party, the opposition after 2014 is no longer fighting for power. We're fighting now for India. That's, I'm absolutely convinced. For me, for me, we're now fighting a battle for India. Before 2014, when we used to fight elections, we were fighting to win elections. We were fighting for power. Now that game has changed. Because the rules now have completely changed. We don't have the institutions to protect us. We don't have the architecture to make it a See, what is India? What is when you say we're going to have a constitution? What is India? It is a negotiation. India decided that we're going to have a free and fair fight for power. And that's what it did until 2014. And you mentioned there was a brief period where, you know, emergency where the Congress party was wrong. And I'm the first to say it. But that changed in 2014. That is not happening anymore. There is not a free fight for power in India anymore, which means now we have to fight for India. Very well put. Thank you very much. I want to be positive about this, because for me, this is the best opportunity that India could have ever got to learn, to understand its weaknesses, to emerge stronger. I think, I think it's like India has to go through the fire to transform itself. And you can never transform yourself without going through fire. So there is going to be a cost. And we're going to bear the cost. And we're going to come out on the other side and we will be wiser. We will be nicer. We will be more compassionate. And I think we will play an important role on the planet. I think, I think I mentioned to you, China and the United States, what I didn't say there is I think making sure that those two superpowers don't go to war. I think that is something that India should take as its responsibility. So India has to play that global role. We after all are a bridge to both those cultures. We have a bridge that used to go back to China, Buddhism. We have a bridge that goes west. So we are a bridging civilization. We are an embracing civilization. So we have to become a bridging and an embracing civilization. It's going to be painful, but it will be done. That is the kind of global ambition. That is the nature of global ambition that I really want for India as an Indian. Thank you very much. This has been the candid, non-political conversation has been just wonderful for us. I'm sure people have enjoyed and the feedback I'm getting is very positive. And generally, I feel the mood in India is positive in the way in which you're sensing and stressing. So thank you, Sri Rahul Gandhi, for coming on our program, for being with us. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure. And be safe in the times of COVID, even though I believe you've had the vaccination. I've had the vaccination now, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, the organizers.