 We are heading into some serious trouble. The BJP thinks India's power comes from a centralized, unified vision. Actually, India's power comes. It's a fight and we are very convinced we'll win the fight. I didn't walk 4,000 km because you know I like walking 4,000 km. I walked 4,000 km because there was no other way to get our message across. Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. Today we have the unique privilege of welcoming one of the most distinguished figures in Indian politics, Mr Rahul Gandhi. Thank you so much Mr Gandhi for joining us. You went to Bharachore Yatra, you met people. It was a really time of reinvigration of the congress party and also you got to learn so many things. So what did you learn and how are you going to translate those insights? What I learnt in the Yatra was two-three different things. One I realized that what is called the politician in the West and in India is basically dead. It's a category that has collapsed on itself. If you want to do politics, you cannot use the same old rules that you were using before. It doesn't work. And so you have to do it with a completely new imagination and in a different manner. That was one thing I learnt. And the second thing I realized which is connected to the first is that huge part of why the politician is dead is because he's not listening anymore. Politician has gone into a zone where he just wants to please at all costs. What people actually want is not somebody who just listens to them. What they want is a conversation. What they want is sometimes for him to be challenged or her to be challenged and sometimes for them to be challenged. And that conversation is gone. The dominant image of India in the past ten years has been of economic development. Somehow curiously with existing problems. So what do you think in the past ten years, what has worked, what hasn't worked? Whenever you talk about economic development, right, you have to ask the question in whose interest is that economic development taking place. Any economic system that grows, it never grows in the interest of everybody. It always grows in the interest of some groups. The question to ask is what is the nature of that growth and who is benefiting from that growth? Right next to the figure of growth in India, you have the figure of unemployment in India. So India is growing, but the way it's growing is by concentrating wealth. By massively concentrating wealth towards very few people. And most of the growth is happening based on natural resources, on consumption and not on production. Which for a country like India is a real problem. Because without a production system, without a production network, without manufacturing, country the scale of India simply cannot employ its people. Similar to the United States, we are operating on a debt sort of model and we are no longer producing things. The real challenge in India is how do we set up a production economy is able to give large numbers of people jobs. We have two or three businesses that pretty much control our entire business system. We have Mr. Radhani. Everybody knows he's directly connected to the Prime Minister. He owns all our ports, all our airports, our infrastructure, agriculture, mines, power. That level of concentration, you get growth, but you won't get any distribution. And a country like India needs distribution. So why do you think this discontent and this growing inequality, the highest unemployment rates, why do you think this has not translated into electoral outcomes or even mobilization of people? There is massive mobilization of people. But for an election, you need infrastructure to fight an election. So you need a free media to fight an election. You need a fair legal system to fight an election. You need fair election commission to fight. You need access to finance. You need institutions that are neutral. Imagine the United States where the IRS, the FBI, their full-time job is destroying the lives of the opposition. So that's the paradigm we're in. I didn't walk 4,000 kilometers because I like walking 4,000 kilometers. I walked 4,000 kilometers because there was no other way to get our message across. Even my social media is fully capped. I've got a shadow band 24-7, my Twitter's under control, my YouTube's under control, and I'm not alone. The entire opposition. So those are the dynamics that the opposition in India is dealing with. I don't think India is running a free and fair democracy anymore. I think 90% of Indian media is controlled by three people. And the media is famously not generous to you, right? No, no. I mean, I'm a problem because I represent groups that are not represented in the media. Poor I represent Dalits, Tribals, OBCs, weaker sections. They have no access to the media. The media is not interested in them. The big battle in India is actually the caste battle. So we're running almost from a caste perspective an apartheid system. So that's what I'm trying to change. Because the entire system is controlled by a very thin group. I'm glad you mentioned caste because I go to a public policy school. Very few, of course, very few people from the marginalized caste. Myself, I'm OBC, so I really see caste in everything. But one curious thing I've noticed is that there's a proportion of student body which is interested in running for office in their respective countries. But the Indians are just never interested because the barrier they think is caste, the caste algorithm. If they run for office, their caste matters. They can only run for office from certain constituencies. Some, like Muslims, so the representation will never translate. So how does INC sort of, or India Alliance, let's say, envision how will it break these caste algorithms? In India, politics is a hard business. I would even go to say it's a brutal business. So I'd be surprised if you'd get people sitting in Harvard Kennedy School who'd say, listen, we want to go into full-scale, hardcore combat. But there are many, many guys who come from a different space who are more than ready to fight that stuff. I mean, don't underestimate how painful Indian politics can be and how rough it can be and how harsh it can be. In your view, what is the essence of India and how do you perceive India's role and identity in the global context? There's two visions of India that are in combat. One idea says India's a union and the other idea says India's a nation. A union requires a constant negotiation. And if you think about India as a union, then you protect the negotiation. And we feel India is a union of states. And what makes India India is the negotiation between its people, the conversation between its people, which is based on democracy, which is based on human rights, which is based on freedom, which is based on an institutional framework that is neutral. The BJP and the RSS believe that India is not a union, that it's a nation with one ideology, one religion, one language and they are not interested in really having negotiation or a conversation. So they kill the negotiation, they try and capture the institution. So that's really the political fight in India right now. We feel if you end the negotiation in India, the conversation between the union, India collapses. India tears itself apart. So you can see that Manipur is burning. You can see Jammu and Kashmir is burning. You can see Tamil Nadu has a problem. So you can see that, as somebody said to me the other day, there's a problem on the edges. And if you want to understand a system, you've got to look at the edges and see what's going on at the edges. So imagine if you're from the United States in North Carolina, the writ of America doesn't run. That's what's going on in Manipur. No central forces can go into Manipur and it's full-scale civil war going on there. So how do you balance as a political leader? So especially in this political climate, talking about giving people what they want versus what they actually need to hear. So we tend to talk a lot about everything is fine, we'll give you pre-internet, versus how do you talk about what they need to hear, that there are these problems that they need to address. First of all, as a politician, right, something I discovered, communicating by talking is almost useless. We do it, it's not powerful. It's almost a waste of time. Communicating by doing, communicating by acting, as opposed to communicating by talking. And then you can talk around the action. The Bharat Jodo idea, it's a very powerful communication. We walked seven hours a day, we spoke half an hour a day. If you ask anybody what we said, people remember one or two things, but everybody knows that we walked 30 kilometers a day, 450 days. Communication is much more about core values than it is about technicality. And India is an example. Here democracy is being overrun. So to me that's what leadership is about. It's about saying uncomfortable things. China is sitting in India today, thousands square kilometers of Indian territories in Chinese hands. Nobody in India is saying it. I'm saying it, the government is not saying it, the government is denying it. Because they're scared to tell the people of India the reality. No Indian newspaper is saying it, no Indian politicians are saying it, you guys aren't saying it. So there has to be a point where the politician says, okay man, I'm going to tell you the truth. And I'm telling you the truth because if we don't face the truth, we are going to be outcompeted by these guys. Mr Gandhi, one important question on which I'm very curious to know your views. Artificial intelligence is taking over. I'm personally working on integrating political campaigns and artificial intelligence. Do you think that the time has come where you and your party should invest into artificial intelligence? What about AI, right? Is AI operates on top of a network? Any AI is applied on a network. If you make the America, China, India comparison, Chinese AI will come out of the production system. American AI will come out from the act of consumption because you're not in the production system. So in my view, the type of network you're sitting on determines the efficiency of your AI. Now what you're saying is interesting our network is fundamentally different than the BJP network. AI applied on our network will operate completely differently than AI applied on any other network. Now I find most of the nine people say AI, AI, AI, but nobody says, okay, so what's the network you're applying it on? America is an ally, but even 10 years ago when India had different system and more democratic system, India kept working both with the Soviets or Russians at the time in America. Why would that change or is it going to change under your government? A solid Russian-Chinese alliance is a real problem for the United States. We have traditionally had a relationship with Russia. Being an ally of the United States or a partner of the United States doesn't mean we don't talk to anyone else. We had a relationship with Iran and it's a relationship that's thousands of years old. So there's no contradiction between having a relationship with Iran and Russia and being a partner of the United States. So this idea that, you know, nation-states are all in, it doesn't work like that. Big states like India, whether we like it or not, we have to have a relationship with China. We have to have a relationship with Russia. We have to have a relationship with the United States. Question is, what are we trying to do? Are we trying to promote democratic values? Are we protecting the idea of voice? What does our model look like? That's really the question. And you also got to realize the difference between power and force. The BJP thinks India's power comes from a centralized, unified vision. Actually, India's power comes from its diversity. Actually, India's power comes from the many languages, the many conversations, the many ideas, the flexibility that India brings to the table. These guys come to the United States. They almost adapt straight inside. So that's India's power. You also expressed your interest in philosophy. Maybe in the western cultures, the emphasis is on the individual. I need to know it all. So if you were to bring this to the western societies, because we don't hear this from our politicians in the western world, what tool do you recommend that people can use? What tools do you recommend that? Do you know the two central philosophies in India? The one in the west, the Judeo-Christian one, is that you're born, you die. All of you think you die, right? Everybody thinks you die. And everybody thinks you were born, right? Well, in India, there are two philosophies. One that says that you never die and the other that says you were never born. So the philosophy of Shiva says you were never born. You don't exist. And the philosophy of Vishnu says you never die. It doesn't look it. But all these people running around here, they're completely differently wired. If you ask them, for example, what happens after you die? He's reborn. So he actually doesn't have a conception of death. And India's got some very interesting philosophical structure. To say that you don't exist is quite, to the western mind, is crazy. But when you're talking, right, what I look for is energy. I'm looking at the energy flow around them. And I'm looking for indications of pain. And from that listening, then I can start to build a narrative. For example, Dalit people in India basically told that they don't exist. So he's now completely isolated. And he's operating in that isolation. Now you imagine the pain coming. Every day, he's being humiliated and that has an effect on his structure. So listening is not looking carefully and feeling where is this blockage. And it's at one level, right, it's becoming the other person. It's basically destroying yourself and saying, okay, for the next five minutes I don't exist. Okay, so it's making more sense now. And I think that the difference that I mentioned before the western eastern, even, you know, like I said, makes even more sense. I think it's really interesting when you talk about ideas like force and power and deep listening and listening the way you explained it. Is that something that you look at also transferring into your corridors as well, and that is the way to sort of have the alternative of what we can look at in terms of Indian politics. Because what we see today is very different, you know, in terms of, we think politics is very nasty. But if we start to think about it can we possibly look at an alternative and if that is the plan and how do you plan to do it? From 2004 to last year I've been in politics for 20 years but in my entire political life I never used the word love. It was like, I was like, wait, that's strange. I'll say to my mother I love you I'll say to my friends I love you I use it quite liberally. But for the people I work I don't use it. And it was shocking, it suddenly struck me why the hell is that happening? And then so I started to use this word in that walk, right? If I meet somebody I say I love you. Now it seems bizarre, right? The point I'm making is that how I start the conversation is up to me. And bringing love into the idea of politics it's given me more benefit in one year than it's given me in 20 years. Now taking some of these ideas to hardcore political fighters it's not easy. What you can do is you can infuse it into the organization but forcing a guy to listen when he's not interested it's a waste of time. But I think in India our freedom struggle is that we're the only country in the world that fought I had a freedom struggle where we didn't kill anyone and we invited the British to our independence day, right? So not be bothered about giving up space. But we're trying to in our own way we've got setups in our party they call the crazy guys but we've got a setup in our party that does this. This difference between power and force is something that you guys should think of. You'll see Nelson Mandela defeating the apartheid state. You'll see Mahatma Gandhi, you'll see these guys you'll see them in your businesses you'll see them in your offices you'll see them in your election no matter what happens this guy is just going. It's not about talking to people it's not about seeing something about some policy or answering your question about AI my power comes from listening right? My power comes from thinking deeply about what you're seeing about giving you a space to sit there and say okay go say whatever you want, I'm listening. Now once I got that clear and I say okay where was I wrong okay eliminate that now and then you refine it it's always about connectivity it's always about listening to the other person connecting with the other person it's always about being gentle with yourself being kind to you guys not kind to yourself all Harvard guys seriously I've been there brutal with yourself every morning you get up and you're like so that gentleness has to come you got to be kind to yourself you got to have a proper perspective of where you're sitting how difficult what you're doing is so that gentleness to yourself gentleness to other people that has to be that I've really spoken a lot thank you, thank you for coming you only have this mug to get to I've been looking for a big coffee cup as it helps my face is me he's like, get on the bike