 My name is Anika Vagarya. I'm a current first-year student who will be in Currier House next semester, and I'm a member of the Forum's research team. As one of the demographically youngest nations in the world today, the social and political fabric of India is ever evolving. This afternoon, we'll be exploring the current challenges, opportunities, and the state of democracy in India that define the nation today and will continue to define India in the decades to come. Specifically, we'll analyze topics ranging from international competition and the future of Congress to the significance of public service and the path to restore Indian citizens' faith in their democracy. And so, to delve into all of these topics and more, it is my great honor to introduce our guest for this afternoon, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, member of India's parliament, Lok Sabha, and former president of the Indian National Congress Party. Since 2004, Mr. Rahul Gandhi has been a member of parliament and he currently represents the constituency of Vayanath in Kerala in the Lok Sabha. In 2007, he was named General Secretary of the Indian National Congress in charge of the youth and student organizations of the party. In January 2013, he assumed office as vice president of the Indian National Congress. Mr. Rahul Gandhi then served as president of the Indian National Congress from December 2017 to July 2019. In the past, Mr. Gandhi has served as a member of the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, human resource development, external affairs and finance and the consultative committee for the ministry of civil aviation, the ministry of rural development, and the ministry of finance and corporate affairs. Currently, he serves on the parliamentary standing committee of defense and the consultative committee for the ministry of external affairs. Throughout his life, Mr. Gandhi has spearheaded meaningful and lasting progress and change in India with the values of non-violence, equality, and justice. Building on his public service efforts and goals, Mr. Gandhi has championed the development of a self-help group movement and a non-profit eye care provider in Uttar Pradesh. He also serves as a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Moderating our conversation this afternoon will be Ambassador Nicholas Burns, who is the Roy and Barbara Goodman family professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He additionally serves as the founder and faculty chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project and faculty chair of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship. Ambassador Burns further serves on the board of directors of the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, is a faculty affiliate of the Middle East Initiative, and is a faculty associate at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Gandhi and Ambassador Burns, and I hope everyone here really enjoys our conversation this afternoon. Anika, thank you very much for that very kind introduction to my friend Rahul Gandhi and Rahul, welcome back. It's a great pleasure to see you back here at the Kennedy School. I want to say good afternoon to everybody watching here in the United States and North America. Good evening to all of our friends in India. And I know I've been on social media this morning. I've seen a lot of buildup for this conversation with Rahul Gandhi. I first met Rahul. I think it was during George W. Bush's state visit to India. In March of 2006, we've become friends. We've seen each other in Delhi. And we were really honored to have to host Rahul Gandhi here at Harvard in the autumn. And I was honored to appear on his podcast last summer at the height of the pandemic. Today, we thought we'd have a conversation where I'd ask Rahul a series of questions about public service, about the crises in India, about the Congress Party and about our bilateral relationship between India and the United States. In about 35 to 40 minutes from now, we'll transition to questions from our Harvard College and Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard University students. So, Rahul, welcome. It's really good to have you back with us, Albaid virtually. We'd rather have you on the campus, but at least we can have this virtual meeting. Welcome. Thank you, Nick, and thank you to the university as well. I'm looking forward to this. Thank you, Rahul. And I wanted to start with a question about public service because the Kennedy School of Government is founded on the principle that we want our students to be involved in the public square. No matter where they're from, we want them to be involved in improving the human condition. And you obviously grew up at a unique time and a unique family where your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been so committed to your country and to the future of your country. Did you always assume when you were younger that some form of public service would be your life's work? Well, I mean, I think first of all, all families are unique in their own ways. So, I guess I don't see it as a unique family. I just see it as a family that happens to go through certain things. But I grew up in that environment of public service. I mean, so from when I was small, there was this underlying thing of a sense of trying to understand India, trying to understand what is going on, trying to understand what are the forces at play, trying to understand some of these things and how they work. So in a sense, I was embedded in it and I saw it from the beginning, you know, from when I was small. Of course, there were certain events that sort of pushed me in a way. My father's assassination was one of them that developed that sense that I felt that my father was in a sense fighting particular forces and he was wrong. And so as a son, that of course had an effect. And then also, I was brought up when I was young with the idea that you cannot tolerate injustice. And that's just something that I've been trained from the beginning. If I see it, it drives me up. I get agitated and it doesn't matter to whom the injustice is being done. So it's not that, you know, it could be an injustice done even to somebody I'm not very fond of and that gets me going. So those are the type of things. Thank you, Rahul. And of course, you grew up in a country that was under construction, a country that had just become independent in 1947 after colonial rule and both of our countries, the United States and India are grand experiments in citizen rule, in Democratic rule. One thing that we try to emphasize with our students is especially when you live in a democracy, you're responsible for what happens and whether that's the sense of injustice that needs to be corrected and overcome or just the commitment to make your country better and more just. That's part of the responsibility all of us have. And my next question really has to do with the extraordinary year we've been living. The reason we're virtual and you're not in Cambridge with us right now is the pandemic. I know it's been a very tough time in India with the recent spike with a lot of suffering and infections and death. We have shared that with you. We have 552,000 Americans dead because of the coronavirus. We've struggled in the United States to have a better public response. I think we're seeing that under President Biden, a much better response. We've had the racial protests. You've had the farmer protests. We're the two most important democracies in the world. And I wanted to ask you, how does India recover? I mean, the United States has to recover as well. How do we both recover from this, but particularly in your case with these cataclysmic events? How do you see India's path ahead? I mean, corona is one element of it. And of course, there is a vaccine strategy and there's taking care of the disease itself. But I think the disease operates on a particular paradigm. It operates on a particular level of connectivity. And I think we are reaching a point where that level of connectivity is challenging certain structures of ours, certain fundamental structures. The idea of the nation state, the idea of institutions, the idea of how these interact with each other. So those things are sort of coming undone. And we have to think about a new paradigm. Of course, we can't shut down this connectivity. We have to adapt to the connectivity. But we shouldn't move into a sort of non-democratic paradigm, which is easy to do when you're operating in these circumstances. You know, corona is a huge opportunity, at least in India, to misuse technology, to misuse some of these ideas. To get, you know, the lockdown is a very powerful thing. If you're thinking about controlling a large population. You've got, I mean, I have never experienced in my life a year like the one I've spent, where I assume that it is normal for me to just lock myself up. I mean, this is not, this has never happened. Maybe, I don't know, maybe in World War, you know, during the bombing campaign, but I don't even think that was the case. So, there are these new mindsets that are evolving, which are actually dangerous mindsets, and we have to guard against them. But it's going to take a lot of work. From the Indian perspective, India, as I said, sometime earlier is a negotiation. It's a negotiation between multiple ideas. And our institutional framework basically allows us to manage that negotiation. And that institutional framework is under attack. So, I worry that the negotiation will break down. And if the negotiation breaks down in a country like India, then we're in very serious trouble. And of course, you're dealing with the pandemic, but you're also dealing with these remarkable protests by the Indian people, at least from the farming community in Delhi and other major cities. How do you respond to that as a political leader and to the demands that those people are making? It's again the way you run the country. I remember when we were in government, we had constant feedback. It would always amaze me at how quickly our system got feedback. You know, it was literally within days, we would get a pressure coming at us, whether it was from farmers, whether it was from laborers, whether it was from big business. There was a feedback loop. And it was what amazed me is how quick, how effective and how powerful it was. It was right in our face. And we almost couldn't avoid it. And that feedback loop is now shut. So, the model that the government uses and some of the ideas that they project has shut down that feedback loop, right? You see it in the, you know, when Gauri Lankesh gets assassinated, the activist, you see it when people are beaten up. You see it when people are attacked. These are all, you're shutting down the feedback loop. And what has happened is that the government has shut the feedback loop. So, the farmers have no other way except to come out onto the street. I mean, we sent messages to the leadership of the nation saying, do not do this. This is a very serious problem if you're going to do this. Our Chief Minister of Punjab wrote multiple letters saying that please have a discussion, engage with these people. And absolutely, it is important to reform agriculture 100%. But you cannot attack the foundation of the agricultural system. And you certainly cannot do it without having a conversation with them because they're going to react. It's the same idea of the lockdown. We do a four day, we do a lockdown immediately like that with no warning. We shut the whole country down. One of the largest countries in the world, one of the most complex countries in the world has the harshest lockdown imposed immediately. In fact, now it's come out that even the cabinet was not asked, even the other institutions were not asked. So, it's a style of government. And it comes from a centralization of power and a belief that centralized power understands everything. You know, if you look at when the lockdown happened, I started saying, look, please, and I said it again and again and again. I said, please do not respond to this centrally. Respond to this in a decentralized manner, devolve power to the states, devolve power to the districts and let them engage with this problem. Because what Karnataka needs is completely different than what Tamil Nadu needs. It's completely different than what UP needs. And if you impose a blanket requirement, you're going to impede their fight. And it took the government a good couple of months to understand that. By then, the damage was done. So, the ability to put your message across so forcefully when you control the media, automatically stops you from listening. And it puts you in a mindset of, okay, I control the media space. I control the narrative. So, I don't really need to listen to anybody. And that's how you operate. And I remember that our entire job was listening for the feedback. We would be waiting when we did something to say, okay, who's going to respond? And now what do we do? That's missing in this government. And that is the case with GST. That's the case with demonetization. That's the case with the lockdown. That's the case with the fondos. It's a style of governance. Thank you very much. When we had a chance to speak the other day, just to get ready for this interview. And we talked about the fact that democracies are being challenged these days by authoritarian powers, by forces within, by populism. In our country, we've gone through the most tumultuous time in my lifetime, especially on January 6th, violent insurrection to prevent the alternance in power between a defeated candidate, Donald Trump, and a victorious candidate, Joe Biden. In your country, obviously Congress has had a great run in government, including in the last decade. But now Congress is out. How does Congress recover its political strength? I mean, at some point, there'll be an alternance in power in India too, the way it happens in all democracies. What kind of changes or strategic choices are you making to strengthen Congress for the political arena? We are fighting two elections right now, right? I'll give you an example. And in Assam, the gentleman who's running our campaign over there has been sending me videos of BJP candidates running around with voting machines in their cars, right? And he's screaming at the top of his voice, saying that, look, I've got a real serious problem here. There's nothing going on in the national media. There is a wholesale capture of the institutional framework of this country. Complete. There is absolute financial dominance that the BJP has, right? There is absolute media dominance that the BJP has. It's not just the Congress. The BSP is not winning an election. The Samajwadi is not winning an election. The NCP is not winning an election. To fight 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 actually allow me to operate as a political body. I don't have them. So what's the answer? The answer is that when you behave the way the BJP is behaving, a lot of people get discontented very fast and that's what's happening. And so the answer then is to bring these people together. But to understand that we are no longer in the same paradigm we were before 2014. We're in a different paradigm. We are in a paradigm where the institutions that are supposed to protect us do not protect us anymore. The institutions that are supposed to support a fair political fight do not do so anymore. So you can say we are in a democracy. But I'll give you an example. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's was one of the biggest operators automatically downloaded. Now, can you imagine if in the United States one candidate had his icon next to the iMessages icon on every single phone and the other candidate didn't? What would you call that? That's not I mean that's what's happening here, right? So there is a complete control of the system. And but what's interesting to me is that the speed with which people are getting discontented is massive. It's happening very quickly. And so the opportunity for us is huge. We have to redefine ourselves though. In addition to dealing with the barriers that you've described in Indian politics and Indian society for your political party, what is your economic strategy going forward? I know that even before the pandemic started, India's once very vibrant GDP growth rates had fallen below 5%. And there was a lot of worry in India among India's friends like me that India was really slowing down. What is Congress's recipe to bring India back? I mean, ideally India would want to be a double digit growth considering the size of your population, the number of young people coming into the economy every year. The only way to start the economy now is to jumpstart consumption. So huge amount of money into people's hands to fire the economy up. Otherwise it's not going to start. So we had a concept called Nyae, some variation of the universal basic income. That would be one element of it, but what we need to do is we need to start the economic engine. And the only way we're going to start the economic engine is by firing consumption. We did it. We've done this before. So the last growth that we had in 2004 to 2000 when we were in power. Our Manrega program, which injected money directly into the rural economy fired our economy, right? It was hugely criticized at the time, but after that people came to me, economists came to me and said, wait a minute, we've looked at the numbers and what's actually happened is that the guaranteed work scheme has fired the rural economy, which is then fired the urban economy. So today the problem is people don't have money in their hands. You have demonetized the economy. You've imposed a GST on the economy and you've crippled the job creation engine, which is small and medium businesses. And then you're building these massive monopolies where basically two or three people control every single business. They can't provide any other jobs it needs. So our demonetization and the GST basically destroyed our informal sector, destroyed our small and medium businesses, which are the elements of our economy that give us jobs. So again, supporting those structures, supporting small and medium businesses and bringing them back out of the mess they're in. That would be central component. And of course, with a liberalizing view, without an inward looking shutting doors down view, I don't believe that that can work. Rahul, in our two countries, both democratic, both free market. There's always a tension between what's the role of government and what's the role of the private sector. In our country, we've been living really under the influence of President Reagan for the last 30 years, smaller government, stronger private sector, tax cut, etc. What's really remarkable, I think, about what's happened to the American people in the last 12 months is there is very strong public support in the polls right now for what Joe Biden is doing, bring back government, bring back a much larger and durable safety net for those less fortunate, even the middle class, which is suffering greatly in the United States. And so you have these remarkable programs, a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package, a $2 trillion infrastructure program, more coming. We haven't seen this since Lyndon Baines Johnson, really since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Is that essentially a difference between Congress and the BJP? Is your party more in favor of a strong government, or is that too simplistic an analysis? I think it is a bit simplistic. I think under the current situation, I think what President Biden is doing is spot on. And I think, frankly, if you were to ask me, that's the only way out. There is no other way out than to go down that path. And I think India should be thinking along similar terms. We've been telling the government that you need to start putting money into the system. They just refuse. So we're convinced that the Indian economy is not going to start without that. And I think what the United States has done, I think it's groundbreaking and I think it's spot on. There is, of course, in my view, a definite space for the private sector. But there are a lot of spaces in India where the public sector has to operate. We in a country like India, if we want to educate our people, it has to be done by the public sector. It can't be done by the private sector. They can have a small part of it, but they can't do it. And the same with health care. So I think government should focus on the fundamentals and infrastructure, on the essentials. And the rest of the stuff, let private businesses operate. Thank you. Rahul, before we go to student questions in five or six minutes, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about foreign policy, about India and the United States. Now, India and China, and maybe start with China. The Chinese have been extraordinarily aggressive towards India along your long border in the Himalayas. We saw that in 2017. We've seen it again multiple times in the last 12 months. Quite objectionable attempts by China, in my view, to intimidate India. How should India best respond to that, most effectively respond to a direct challenge like this from the Chinese government? First of all, the Chinese are currently occupying Indian territory as we speak. Their troops are in our territory. There's not a peep about it in our media. I mean, can you imagine what would happen in the United States if the Soviet Union had occupied parts of the United States? I mean, you would hear nothing but that all day long, but there's not a peep here. And the reason that China feels they can do this is because they see a weakened India. They see an India that is internally divided. They see an India that is not acting strategically. They see an India that is acting tactically and is not able to see the larger picture. I am absolutely convinced that a strong India, a united India, and an India with a clear strategy has no problem dealing with China. I think the Chinese can sense that there is weakness in the Indian leadership, and that is why they have moved. One of the issues in our country as we confront our similar competitive relationship with China is how strongly should we speak out about human rights abuses? President Trump was literally silent on Hong Kong and on the terrible, terrible atrocities being acted against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province. President Biden has spoken out quite strongly in opposition. Is that should India be matching the United States or with the United States and taking on the Chinese on human rights issues? Yeah, you should have a view on human rights. But I think one needs to step back a little bit and ask what is China doing and why are they succeeding and why are they occupying the space that they occupy? And there we have to do some serious introspection. I remember when I was a little kid, the cars you used to see on the streets, the cars that one valued were American cars. I remember the producer of things on the planet was the United States. That's gone, right? Neither are you the producer, neither are we the producer. The battle, the manufacturing battle, the production battle has been won by China and they are today adding tremendous amount of economic value. That's the real issue, right? And because they're doing that, they're generating huge amounts of money and then they're investing that money. And they're investing that money in defense. They're investing that money in Belt and Road. They're investing that money in influence, etc., etc. So my point is, yes, talk about human rights, but let's talk about production. Let's talk about how to challenge the idea that China is going to be the production center of the world. Now, I like what President Biden has done. He's put in a lot of money for developing infrastructure and engineers and science, right? But how are you going to challenge the Chinese and manufacturing? Sir, please go ahead. I don't see, right? I don't see a US strategy or an Indian strategy to tackle this one central issue, which is China is the production center of the world and the amount of production that they're pulling off is becoming unstable. And there needs to be another poll that is doing similar amounts of production, adding similar types of value. Now, the problem for you is it's very difficult for you because of your wage rates, etc., etc. to compete with them, but that's where we come in, right? Now, my issue with the partnership that we have is that it is completely focused on defense in the Quad. Okay, no problem, but how are you challenging the central idea of Made in China? You're using an iPhone. I have one line here, right? When we bought this, we sent money to the Chinese. How are you challenging that idea? How does Biden's plan challenge that idea? So I would partly disagree with you here very respectfully by saying Joe Biden likes to say, don't bet against the United States of America. And that's not just bombast. That's actually true in the sense to answer your question. Yes, the Chinese are the greatest manufacturing and export power in the world right now. Belt Road gives them an enormous reach around the world, but nine-tenths of the value of this phone was produced in California, which assembled in China. But the innovation, Rahul, comes from the United States. And I would just say in this domain where we can challenge the Chinese in the United States, we can challenge them in artificial learning, intelligence, and machine learning, in quantum sciences, in biotechnology. If you think of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, these are powerful cutting-edge companies that have the United States and in a way India as well in a very dominant position. Think of all the Indian Americans responsible for some of these companies in Silicon Valley in Boston. We're the leading biotech city right now. And so I think what we've got to do is use government and research and development and capital infusion to support these companies and support these critical technologies. We can do that if we're working together. It's not inevitable the Chinese are going to dominate. There's a central problem in my view. When you're talking about manufacturing, you're essentially talking about inside a factory, you're talking about huge social tensions. It's a volatile thing. And the Chinese suppress those tensions using the PLA. The Chinese advantage for manufacturing is the fact that they are able to operate in a non-democratic way and they're able to use force to manage this social tension. We don't want to do that. We can't do it, right? So now how do we resolve that social tension problem? Compete with the Chinese in a democratic structure. By the way, I would challenge the idea that majority of the value in that iPhone comes from the United States at risk of at risk. But I would seriously challenge that idea. The innovation, the design comes from the ecosystem of Apple, which is global, but it's based in California, assembled in China. We still can do some remarkable things, particularly our two countries given our scientific and engineering talent. But let me ask you, I know we've got to bring students into this. Let me ask you one more question. We talked about the Quad glancingly. We have come together now, India, the United States, Japan, Australia, the first ever Quad head of government meeting with just a couple of weeks ago. And none of us want to fight China, but we want to limit China and prevent it from becoming the dominant military power in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean in the Western Pacific. Is India all in on the Quad? India's been ambivalent for many years. Do you see the fundamental turning point maybe away from India's earlier concept of non-alignment? I mean, under the current circumstances, under the current situation, yes, that is the direction India is heading in. But once again, there is a military component to this, but there is also production component to this. And you have to compete with China on production. And I'm not one who believes that simply having a military strategy against the Chinese is going to work. I think you need an economic strategy, a sound production strategy in tandem. And I think that's missing. I mean, I can certainly see by what is going on in India that the Indian government is not thinking about it in the least because if you are thinking about it, you wouldn't be building the type of monopolies that you're allowing, for example. I can see that what the Indian government is doing is not going to allow manufacturing at all because the past to manufacturing is small and medium businesses. The path to manufacturing is making thousands and thousands of these businesses bloom. That path has been cut down. So to me, yes, of course, the Quad is an important component. But without an economic strategy, without a clear-cut economic vision, I'm not convinced about purely a military strategy. How are we proposing to challenge the idea of Belt and Road? Which is basically a realignment of how the world works. It's completely upturning how the world works. Well, we can have whatever military strategy we want without an alternative vision. I don't see it working. And I think we haven't done the homework to do that. Certainly from the Indian side, maybe the Americans have. Well, I think you're right to raise this issue. And I'm going to go to our student question a minute, but I'll just respond and say I think you're absolutely right. We've got to have a strong military partnership. And we have it. We've built it within the United States over the last 15 years. Remarkable to see, particularly our air forces and our navies working together with the Japanese and Australians. But you're right that we've got to spend more time thinking about how we compete technologically. When Joe Biden gave his first press conference eight days ago, it was very interesting at the very end of a long press conference, a journalist asked him about China. And he had a very keen strategic sense of what he wanted to do. And he really focused on your point. He said, we've got to compete technologically. And in the case of the United States, that means greater research and development funding by the federal government into our tech companies, into our universities like Harvard and Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, so that we can outcompete the Chinese on those digital technologies that will dominate. And that's an India-American challenge together. And he also spoke, interestingly, Rahul, to this idea of Belt and Road. And he noted the incredible strength of Belt and Road and said, shouldn't there be a response by the Democratic countries to offer something like this, but without the long-term indebtedness that the Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, has been so prominent in Sri Lanka and other countries around the world. So I agree with you. We're entering a time where the military is very important, but maybe technology and economics will be the deciding factor in the competition that you have and that we have with China. I would just quickly add one point, which is where I see the problem. A country like the United States going down the technology path, how are you going to solve your large blue-collar labor problem? Same problem we have. We've got a huge chunk of our population who today in the United States vote for Mr. Trump, who basically cannot engage with the global economy effectively because manufacturing in the United States is dead, is not at the level with China. That is a strategic vulnerability for the United States, just as it is a strategic vulnerability for India. Technology is not going to solve that problem. Technology will solve the problem of building an iPhone, will solve the problem of getting communication, but technology is not going to solve, not going to give you the number of jobs at that level that you require, and that's the real problem that both India and America have to solve. Of course, for us, it's a much different problem, but the anger that is there in the United States, which frankly is a strategic weakness of the United States and the anger that is developing in India, which is a strategic weakness of India, is happening because we are unable to give a vision to this large chunk of our population. Technology is not going to solve that, in my view. This is such an important question. I would love to continue this just you and I, and I think you're going to see Joe Biden be the most pro-union and pro-middle-class president in two generations. Part of the answer is retraining, and as we get into a clean energy economy and a digital economy, to make sure people are retrained for those jobs, but I don't want to deprive Ryan Tierney, who's one of our students from asking the next question. You and I can continue this. Ryan, you're next. Thank you very much and thank you for coming, Mr. Ghani. Much appreciated. It's been a really stimulating conversation. My question for you is about some more India-specific foreign policy, particularly about the Kashmir region. Last month, India and Pakistan reaffirmed their ceasefire agreement that they signed in 2003, but haven't always abided by in the region since then. How do you hope that India and Kash, that India and Pakistan can kind of back away from the edge of conflict that they've been kind of inching towards for so many months and kind of enter a new relationship that's beneficial to both countries? I mean, they're trying, but I think it's going to be very difficult. I don't think it's going to be easy because India and Pakistan will find it very difficult to go beyond a certain space. So I don't, I mean, I find that I don't think it's going to be an easy thing, but I'm all for trying. I'm all for trying, but I don't think it's going to be easy. Particularly, some of the approaches that have been taken by our government internally and the approaches that have been taken by Pakistan, there's meeting point is not there in my view. Ryan, thank you very much. We're going to hear now from Arjun Aqway. Well, Mr. Gandhi, thank you so much for coming and joining us. I always get excited to hear about India events as I spent several years of my childhood living in New Delhi. I wanted to go back to the topic of the Belt and Road Initiative because this is something that like you mentioned, I think is really going to dominate a lot of foreign policy as we go into the next coming decades. And I wanted to hear you expand a bit more on how you see India and the United States collaborating to present an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative and perhaps where India might be able to go beyond what the United States is able to do purely because it doesn't have the same history and reputation that the United States may have for complicating situations where it gets involved and what assets India has on the table to develop some of these relationships. China has by becoming so powerful in manufacturing and so strong in manufacturing is generating huge amounts of money which they're investing into Belt and Road and the argument that they're making, which is a strong argument for a lot of the countries is we will give you prosperity. The argument we make is yes, but the prosperity is going to come at a price, right? Of course, you'll get prosperity, but then you will be in debt, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but it's a strong argument. It's not a it's not a weak argument, right? For example, some of the work that the Chinese are doing in Pakistan is potentially going to transform Pakistan, right? It might put them in debt, but it will have its effect. Some of the work they're doing in Africa will do the same. Belt and Road is a particular vision of the world. Embedded in Belt and Road is let's put it like this. The idea of democracy is not embedded in Belt and Road. Okay. There are there is a there is an architecture that allows the government coercive action, which is embedded in Belt and Road. So their vision is okay. We're going to build this Belt and Road. We are going to have good control over it and then governments can behave in a particular way if they want because we'll give them all the tools that are required to do this. My point is and the point I was making to Mr. Burns, Professor Burns was look without offering prosperity, democratically, you're not going to challenge them. Right? If I if you go to Africa and you say, you know, the Chinese are offering you prosperity with debt and we say, well, we're not offering prosperity. They'll choose prosperity with debt. Right? And so the real question for me is how do we and I don't say in a confrontational way, how do we produce in a new model of manufacturing of prosperity that is democratic? And that goes much further than saying we are going to do a quad because the quad is not going to produce prosperity. Right? As an as an African country, I'll be like, okay, you got your quad. Yes, there's a military conflict and I'm on your side, but now tell me how I eat. That's the problem the Chinese are trying to solve or pretending to solve. And so to me, there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be done by between the United States and India. And I think really the only other option for the world is India. I don't think I don't think there is an engine of the scale of India anywhere else. And so to me, it's a tragedy that India is not understanding the power it actually wheels. Right? And to me, there's another tragedy, which is the United States and India are having currently a very limited conversation. And I worry that that limited conversation is not going to be good enough. And we're going to find that the ship is sailed and then we're like, okay, now do we deal with this prosperity question and the boat's gone. So that's why I get agitated. Now, India is doing certain things which are very, very destructive. So if you want to propose democratic prosperity, then what's happening in India is just completely wrong. We cannot go to someone and say, listen, we're going to give you democratic prosperity and then we've blown apart all our institutions. So these are the type of questions that I'm sort of struggling with. But the central thing is okay. You want a vision for the world. The Chinese have one. It offers prosperity. Okay. How do we offer prosperity without prosperity? We're going nowhere. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Arjun. Rahul, we're here next from Seymour Bajaj. Hello, pleasure to speak with you. You spoken about a lot of topics with the current state of affairs with India, from international affairs to economics to voting rights. And I was curious, what would you prioritize in terms of policy proposals when you become prime minister? I would move from just a growth-centric idea to a job-centric idea. I would say we need growth, but we're going to do everything to push production and job creation and value addition. Currently, if you look at our growth, the type of relationship there should be between our growth and job creation, between value addition, between production is not there. The Chinese lead value addition, Nick would disagree with me, but the Chinese lead value addition. They, I mean, I've never met a Chinese leader who says to me, he's got job creation problem. I've never met a guy. This is astounding to me because this is the only problem we deal with. Right? So we have to get on that bandwagon. Also, we have to protect in a country like India, the minimums. So you have to put floors under people. You cannot say to people in an urban environment that listen, we're not going to give you hospitals. You know, your children can't have education. So a minimum floor and then moving the country with one, you know, forcefully saying, okay, this is a serious challenge now. Like the United States is sort of moving towards what I like about Mr. Biden's plan is that they clearly recognize the problem that they've understood that now there's a problem, right? That penny hasn't dropped in India. India is still fooling around and dilly-dallying and messing about, you know, killing people and doing all sorts of stuff that is not central to this thing. So I would say go to our people and say, okay, now next 15, 20 years, serious value addition, serious job creation. I am not interested in 9% economic growth. If I don't see job numbers right next to it, if you give me 9% economic growth and say, oh, we don't have jobs. Well, sorry, I don't like that. That doesn't work for me. So that would be the thrust of it, but put it in putting it into a mission mode, right? Like what John F Kennedy did, we got to go to the moon. And then the whole nation is we got to go to the moon. So that's where we got to go. And I think that there'll be different variations of it in the United States and in India. But both those pennies have to drop together. I think, thank you, Seymour. I think it's exactly right, Rahul, Kennedy's admonition to us was a challenge that we had to meet. Joe Biden's been saying now, we've got to end the race, resolve the racial crisis. We've got to have a clean energy future by 2050. Net zero. I mean, these are for our, I think for these young people's generation, similarly ambitious Rahul, we have Mohit Saini next, Mohit. Yeah, thank you for being here. So you mentioned about media dominance and I know you are quite active on social media, especially Twitter. So what role do you think social media has for the opposition party when you know that the media dominance is not working in favor of anybody, but the current government? Look, social media is the best metaphor because please understand. Once you have financial dominance, right, you got social media dominance at the end of it. If you put a thousand crores behind social media and I put five crores behind social media, you're winning. So, so what the BJP RSS have managed is they have managed to dominate all India's institutional structures. The way I like to say it is there is now only one institution in India and that is the RSS. That institution has penetrated all other institutions. They've put their people are in media. Their people are in the judiciary. Their people are in the election commission. Their people are in the bureaucracy. And so the only way out there is mass action. There's no other way. You just go to the people. So we are we're heading into that into that space and that is what you see with the farmers protest and you would start to see more and more of that type of activity. That will that will feed into social media. Mohit, thank you very, very much. Rahul, we're running out of time. Unfortunately, and we've kept you for a long time. We're grateful for your presence. I just had one quick question. It's a cosmic question. So forgive asking at the very end. But the other day we were talking you and I about this major competition between the democratic countries of the world and the authoritarian countries on the idea's basis. Whose idea is more powerful? You and I believe that our idea of democratic freedom, democracy, the rule of law is more powerful. I'm hopeful that we're in the end that our vision will prevail. Are you are you hopeful as well? I think I'm hopeful as long as we are able to propose a vision. I do not agree with the Chinese vision, but I cannot step away from the fact that they have one. I would much prefer our vision, but I can see that we don't have one and and to me a vision, a global vision is what the United States had, you know, when it was doing the Marshall plan that to me is a global vision with all due respect. That's not what America is doing today. They might be doing it internally, but the span that they used to have and the way they used to think about the world, they're not doing it. And I think and I think a lot of it is because they are, they are in a defensive mindset as opposed to being in a expensive mindset and I don't mean an aggressive mindset. Right now to me, the mindset when I listen to American leaders, I sense sort of, okay, we got to we got to defend. We got to hold this thing back to me. That's the wrong idea. I think you have it in you to actually move forward as opposed to as opposed to doing this and I sense, I sense that that's you know, I always hear in the United States and you know, please, maybe I'm overstepping, overstepping my place. But whenever I listen to the United States today, I always hear, oh, so-and-so is the threat, so-and-so is the danger, so-and-so is the risk, China is coming, terrorism, etc., etc. I never hear, okay, guys, what what Mr. Kennedy said, we go on the moon, right? Or what your, what your post-World War II vision was like, we're doing this now and that's what we, how we look at the world and that, that is what I expect from the country where I was educated. I mean, I hold a lot of your values and I look, I look towards you for some of those ideas. So I don't know if I've overstepped myself and gone too far, but that's just how I feel. You haven't overstepped at all, Rahul. I mean, you're part of our university and you and we're proud of that. And I think actually this is a good way to end this discussion. We have to end it and maybe begin the next discussion. It's a question of whether we in democracies will have the self-confidence to put out these big ambitious visions. As you say, not just to counter threats, which we have to do, but to offer ideas to improve the human condition. And we need to do that and I, my sense is increasingly we need to do it together. Indians, Americans, Germans, Japanese, Nigerians, South Africans, we all believe in democracy against this very harsh vision that the Chinese and Russians are offering us. Let's begin there and our next conversation. But may I make a comment? Please. You can hear anything from the U.S. establishment about what is happening in India. If you're saying partnership of democracies, I mean, what's your view on what's going on here? I mean, so I fundamentally believe that America is a profound idea. The idea of freedom, the way it's encapsulated in your in your constitution is a very powerful idea. But you got to defend that idea. And that's the real question. Rahul, thank you. In two weeks, we'll have Shiv Shankar Menon with us talking about that question and other questions of Indian foreign policy. Let's agree. We'll have another conversation and we'll get into that issue as it is a critical issue. You've been very generous with your time. You've been very frank and I appreciate so much this conversation. I want to thank you for it. Thank you for your friendship to our university and thank you for continuing dialogue that you and I have been having now for a long time, which I very much value. And to close out this proceeding, I want to ask my another friend, Mark Garen, the director of the Institute of Politics, to give us some word of hope, Mark, as we enter Easter, Easter weekend. Well, thank you, Nick. And thank you most especially, Rahul. This has been a rich and vibrant and candid conversation and I take hope for the kind of engagement with thoughtful questions from our students and Nick is very thoughtful introduction. So these are the kind of conversations that we pride ourselves at the Kennedy School certainly at the Institute of Politics. The Nick has done with his diplomacy project. So we look forward, as you say, Nick, to more conversations in this and to that regard, I invite all our listeners to two forums next week on Wednesday, April 7th at six o'clock, we'll explore the issues of Jewish identity in public service where we have freshman congresswoman Sarah Jacobs from California and Sarah Hurwitz, graduate of the college and author and chief speechwriter to Michelle Obama. It's co-sponsored by Harvard Hillel and moderated by the IOP Zone Sabrina Goldfisher. And then on Thursday, we will work in partnership with our colleagues at the Shorenstein Center and the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago on a fascinating subject of disinformation. We will have our colleague, Dr. Joan Donovan and Roger McNamee with this important new book bestseller on Zuckerberg, Karen Swisher Times contributing writer and Shorenstein Center director Nancy Gibbs will moderate it. So that will be on Thursday, April 8th at 6 p.m. So I leave with my gratitude to Raul Gandhi and to Nick Burns for their very engaging conversation to all of you for joining us and we welcome you back next week. Thank you all and have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nick.