 Mr. Gandhi, welcome to Stanford. Do you want to say something or just go ahead? Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to come and speak to you. I've heard a lot about your institution. I spent some time in one of your competitors. It's an honor for me to be here. I've been asked to speak about global transition and how the world is changing. And also, how one should act through that change. How one should think about acting through the turbulence that is obviously going to come. I heard in the introduction that I was a member of parliament until a few months ago. I don't think when I joined politics 2004, I ever imagined what I see going on in our country. It was way outside anything that I had ever imagined. To be the first person to get a full criminal sentence on defamation, get the maximum sentence to be disqualified from parliament, I didn't imagine that something like this was possible. But then, I think it's actually given me a huge opportunity. Probably much bigger than the opportunity I would have sitting in parliament. That's just the way politics works. I think the drama started really about six months ago. We were struggling. The entire opposition is struggling in India. Huge financial dominance, institutional capture. We were struggling to fight the democratic fight in our country. And we decided none of the systems were working. Democracy isn't just about an opposition party. It's about a set of institutions that support the opposition party. And those institutions either captured, certainly weren't playing the role that they're supposed to play. And so we decided to do something quite strange. We just decided to walk across the country. And we never imagined for a second what would happen when we walked across the country. What would happen not just politically, not in terms of the type of response we got, but what would happen to us when we walked across our country. All of us. It was started with about 125 people. And it fundamentally transformed the way we think about our country, about our people, about politics, about what is important. A lot of people asked me, what's the lesson you've learned from this? And for a long time, I couldn't quite say what it was. I couldn't answer. I'd say, I've picked up so much information overload. I can't really tell you what this has done. It was the most beautiful experience of my life, by far. It was very painful. I had a knee problem. It's one of those things you get up and you say, OK, we're going to walk 4,000 kilometers. I said, at some level, the crazy thing to even conceptualize. And I thought that would be, I'm reasonably fit. I thought it shouldn't be too difficult. I calculated it in my mind. I said, well, what's it going to be? It's going to be 25 kilometers a day. No big deal. And then I had a knee problem. And then the whole thing, the way life works, everything just transformed itself. We met what I would best describe as the soul of our country. And very quickly, in a week, 10 days, a silence descended on us. We couldn't speak. We went from trying to explain things to people. This is why agriculture isn't working. This is how you should think about education. This is how the health care system should look. This is what we should be doing. And suddenly, we all went silent. And we went silent because we came into contact with the intelligence that we had never seen, that we had never even conceptualized could exist. Farmers who you would say, many people would say, don't have an education. And then who are explaining things to us in a way that we just are in stunned silence? And we saw this with farmers, with laborers, with small businessmen, everybody. And so this silence descended on us. And we just sort of stopped talking and started listening. And we heard tales of immense suffering. I mean, I can think immediately, I thought about one where which sort of, to me, embodied the spirit of my country, our country. It was walking. And a young man came and started walking with me. And I put my arm on his shoulder. And suddenly I realized he didn't have arms. So he had no arms. And I tried to sort of make him a bit comfortable. I didn't want him to feel that I know you don't have arms. He wasn't too bothered. And we started talking, and I asked him, listen, what do you do? And he looked at me and he said, I'm a mechanic. The immediate thing in my mind was he's lying. How can he be a mechanic? He doesn't have arms. It's impossible. So I said, well, I didn't want to be direct. I didn't want to say you're lying. I said, listen, what cars do you repair? He says, I don't repair cars, I repair motorcycles. So I said, oh yeah, what motorcycle do you repair? And he started listing all the motorcycles. So I said, can I come and see what you do? And he said, yeah. And then he proceeded to take us and show us how he serviced a motorcycle with his feet. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. He took apart the entire engine with his feet. And he put the entire engine back together with his feet. I can't do it with my hands. So we saw these type of things happening. And we saw clearly the disconnect between our politics and our people. And that disconnect is visible in the United States. It's visible in the rest of the world. There's a huge divide between the people and the politics. Politics is talking about something else. People are talking about something else. We experienced this multiple times. And as I was walking through this, I kept thinking something puzzled me. What I couldn't understand is that while we were walking, we had no force. Force was completely on the other side. Other side had police. They had the institutions. They had the media. They had social media. They had everything. And here was this group of people. In a few weeks, it became thousands and then millions, just walking. And all the force at the disposal of the government of India could do nothing. And the more they tried to apply force, the less it worked. And so this puzzled me. I was like, how come they have all the force? They have all the systems and nothing's happening. Why, for example, are they just not physically stopping us? And this was a question that just kept rotating in my mind. I'm like, why is it that they have the force but they don't have power? And I realized that force and power are two completely different things. Most people, politicians in particular, confuse force and power, and they think they're the same thing. They're not the same thing. They're completely different things. Power is an act of imagination. Power is in the present. It is not linear. And power comes when you go close to the truth. The reason we could not be stopped by force is because we were weaving around near the truth. And what was really interesting to me was it didn't matter how much force the other side had. They simply could not transfer that force into power. And they kept saying to us, people who ask us, so when you're going to stop, we're like, we're not going to stop. We're going all the way to Kashmir. No, you're not going to be able to go to Kashmir. They told me in Kashmir that, look, if you walk the last four days, you're going to get killed. They're going to throw hand grenades on you. I was like, fine, no problem. Let them do it. I want to see the person who throws a hand grenade on me. And the security guys, the people from the establishment there, I could see in their face that they just couldn't understand what I was saying. So this distinction in your life, in your work, is very important. It doesn't matter how much force the other person has. You can still have power. And it is determined by how close you are and how precise you are with regards to the truth. Now, you can see these moments. Mine was a very small one. You can see these moments of power versus truth in history. Big ones. Example, my leader, Mahatma Gandhi, fought the entire British Empire. He had no force. They had all the force, all the structures, the army, everything. Didn't matter. The Declaration of Independence here in the United States, again, a moment of power, a moment of truth, doesn't matter how much force the other person has. So why am I telling you this? Why am I making this distinction between power and force? And what does it have to do with the transition that we're facing? Well, the transition we are facing, there are three transitions. There is a revolution in mobility. There is a revolution in the energy system. And there's a revolution in connectivity, what we call AI in data. These are the three revolutions that are taking place. And they're going to affect everything. The last time we had a similar transition, a transition of energy, a transition of mobility, we had two world wars. And it's in times like that of great uncertainty, of turbulence, that you need acts of imagination. While I was coming here to Stanford University, I was thinking about it. All the work that you do, a lot of the work that you do, robotics, AI, where was the moment of power? The moment of power was when President Kennedy said, let's go to the moon. That was not an act of force. That was an act of imagination. And from that, a lot of the work you do has emerged, evolved. And that's the type of relationship the United States and India should be thinking about. A relationship that's based on the true reality of our people. We know in India a lot about the reality of our people. All of you know, you live in our great country. You know the levels of poverty that we have. You also know the amazing amount of skills that we have. The United States has the world's cutting-edge technology. And we already have a bridge between us. It's important that this bridge is not simply a bridge based on force. But it's a bridge based on the reality of our people, on an understanding of the realities of both our people. India has some huge advantages. In a data-centric world, we have one of the largest pools of data. You, over here, are testament, many of you, to our skill in technology, in software. There are many more young people like you back home who don't have the opportunity you had, who could augment our capability. So that's what I wanted to leave you with. I think there are difficult times, but there are also times of opportunity. I think there are times when acts of imagination as I called it acts of true power will resonate and can transform the way we think of ourselves. I'm looking forward to answering some of your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming to Stanford. Thank you for being such an ardent and passionate supporter of the US-India relationship. It's great to have you here. I wanted to start by asking you something since you spoke about the Yatra, about this disconnect between politics and people. I imagine you're not planning on walking every year or every few months across India to gather information. No, it's not a bad thing. Perhaps. I mean, every year is difficult, probably not possible. But I think a little bit of movement's not a bad thing. Fair enough. That's a good point. But somehow, in a democracy, we expect this to be institutionalized in some way, right? Same as in the US. As you said, we have a disconnect that sometimes feels like between what our people want and what our politicians say or what our politics are all about. I think the disconnect has a lot to do with concentration of wealth and sort of the inequality in society and also the political system not being able to catch up with the social media and the technology. So there's a little bit of lag between the political system and the technological progress. And I think democracies are struggling with that. Even though this is a point in time where technology is supposed to be connecting us like never before, what you're saying is that these institutions, sometimes it lags a little bit behind. I mean, the systems are not designed for this level of connectivity. And so I think a little bit of evolution in the system is going to take some time, but it'll happen. And what about social media generally? We're in the land of big tech right now. What role can technology play in trying to understand, perhaps, bridge that divide? Or do you think it's just fundamentally on these institutions, the governance structures? I mean, it creates an asymmetry in information. So for example, in our case, the government has information that the opposition just doesn't have. And that can be used politically. So that's one aspect of it. The second is it clusters people together and sort of creates silos where these silos have their own sort of belief structure and they're separated from other people. So paradoxically, it reduces the conversation. You would think that more connectivity would simply increase the conversation. It's not necessarily the case. And so then it becomes important for politicians such as yourself to beat the dirt and walk on the ground. Yeah. And it's surprising, it would be very surprising to me how effective and powerful it is. Because when you do that, the social media system, the press system actually doesn't have a choice anymore. Because their attention gets captured. So even if they want to move their attention, a act like walking across the country just fixates the tension. I think this is, I mean, I understood the sort of Gandhi's sort much, much better. Because I suspected that time also with radio and with these technological changes, they were facing similar problems. And I think that idea of walking across the country forces people to say, OK, so what's going on there? And then the thing starts to work. Makes sense. Just turning to the purpose of your visit, US-India relations, what would you say is the current status of how our two countries work together? I think there's a lot of good work that has been done from the 90s. But as I was saying, I don't see the acts of imagination. I think it's more of the same. But I don't see sort of the crystallization of a vision. I don't see an alternative to, for example, the Belt and Road. Belt and Road is promising prosperity. It's a vision of the world. It's a non-democratic vision of the world. Well, what's the counter vision? So that's where I see the gap. Of course, there is military cooperation. That's fine. That's important. But it can't just be military cooperation. So when you think about how that democratic vision should be formulated, in years past, the US has gotten sort of in trouble from other countries by saying, we're going to define democracy. We're going to carry it out. We're going to lead the way. And in some ways, the US has stepped back on that. India is too big for you to define. I mean, that's not possible. It's not just India, but for a world vision of what democracy is, what the counter to a Belt and Road in India is. Everybody has a role to play. And you propose. You propose, look, this is how we think about it. And then others say, well, actually, we don't agree with that. We agree with that. So I don't see that. I don't see that on the table. How do you compete with the production engine of the Chinese? What does that look like? What does a democratic production system look like? Because if you look at what has happened in the West and in India, we seem to have given up on manufacturing. That's just something that the West certainly doesn't do. Now, of course, there's a conversation here in the United States about redoing it. But how do you do that in a democratic structure? What does that look like? Those are the type of things that I think need to be discussed. Because I see it quite clearly that there are two models on the table. There is a authoritarian model. And then there's a democratic model. And the authoritarian model has got a handle on production. So production in a democratic environment has to be conceptualized and actioned. And I think India has a central role in that. What would that look like? I'm clearly not as familiar with India as you are. But when I work with young adults, I hear from them the same thing. I want a government's job. I'm not saying I want to work in a factory. Their aspirations are, in some sense, misaligned to the vision of manufacturing. So that's the mindset change that has to be brought about. India has a large number of skilled clusters. In every district, there's a skilled cluster. But we're not connecting that cluster with finance. We're not connecting that cluster with technology. We're not nurturing the ability to manufacture. By manufacturing, I don't necessarily mean massive factories the way China does. You could have small and medium factories. You could have technology intensive factories. But at least get on with the business of production. It'll probably look very different in India than it looks in China. It'll probably be much more decentralized. So those things will emerge once you start discussing a potential vision. I also think that neither the United States nor India can do it alone. I think there's a synergy between our two countries that is required for it to happen. What would that take on? What could the US offer to India or vice versa that you would like to see? I mean, India, of course, as I said, has what Saudi Arabia is to oil India as to data. With China, we have the single biggest data pool on the planet. So that's a huge asset that we bring to the table. We have these youngsters who are here and millions of them back home who understand how to manipulate that data, who understand how to conceptualize production. So we have that. We also have a population that is more than ready to work very hard. So that's what we have. So when I listen to you, you have technology. You have Silicon Valley. So these two things need to be brought together. But it needs to be a vision. And it needs to be, you need to start actioning it. So when I hear people from the opposition party coming out here, they talk about the same sorts of things. India needs to make more in India. Manufacturing needs to take off. The US and India need to work together towards this vision. How would you say you differentiate yourself from the ruling power in this dimension? I have a completely different concept of India. I don't see India the way they do. They see India as a top-down centralized system. I see India as multiple cultures, multiple religions, multiple languages. I see it as a decentralized system. I don't think one state should impose itself on another state. I don't think one language should be imposed on the people of India. So it's two completely different visions of India. I actually don't believe that the BJP's vision of India can lead to production. Can you say why? I think because you need to decentralize power in India to produce. You won't be able to do it from Delhi. And that's probably. Like for example, you take a, if you want to look at success, reasonable success manufacturing India as Tamil Nadu. Completely different cultural system, completely different language, completely different history. You have to leave them alone. You have to make them comfortable. You can't let them feel that their language is threatened, their culture is threatened. And then they can do it. But if you are under the impression that, look, my language is being threatened, my culture is being threatened, my belief structure is being threatened, where are you going to sit there and say, let me go and get to work? You're going to be under defensive all the time. So both in the US and in India, one of the big solutions, a top-down solution, perhaps you might say, is to offer subsidies to try and encourage more manufacturing. We see this in the chip wars that are taking place right now in semiconductors. We see this in other industries as well. What's your view on that? How can that be channeled in a more decentralized fashion, I'm assuming you would say? Yeah, you could do that. I think it also has a lot to do with the way you think about finance and the way you think about banking. So if your banking system, at least in India, your banking system is very centralized, and then the top 15, 20 people have full access to the banking system, whereas small and medium businesses, people who want to set up production units, they don't have access. So you have to think about these factors if you want to actually be serious about it. But I don't think India has a choice with regards to production, because we are transitioning from a rural to an urban country. And we've got earlier large masses of people who are connected to the land. And they tended to stay with the land. Now these people are in the cities. And the only way to give them a livelihood is to produce. So I don't think the idea that India can just be a service-oriented country. I don't think the scale of India allows that. And I don't think the numbers allow it. So as India urbanizes, what kinds of changes would you think that the government needs to make? I've always been struck when I go to India that the mayor of, say, some big city like Mumbai or something is a relatively powerless position. Couldn't imagine that. Not relatively, completely. So these are the type of things that you need to change. The ability to impose local taxes. It's a completely different system than the one we have right now. And some of that transition will happen naturally. It'll automatically happen. When we were in the UPA, we conceptualized providing a safety floor. So our idea was people are moving from the rural area to the urban area. This is a difficult transition. This is unsafe. And you tend to go in and out of poverty while you're making this forward and backward movement. So we started to think about ideas like manrega, which is guaranteed employment, right to food, et cetera, et cetera, so that these people would be comfortable making this transition going back and forth. And the biggest idea we had was the guaranteed income idea, which was a scheme called Naya in our last manifesto, and which we've sort of tweaked a little bit and run in Karnataka now. So I think some of those ideas, in addition to building a system of production of manufacturing, would be required. This journey is a very dangerous journey, and it's traumatic. So when you move from a village to Bombay or to Karnataka, don't underestimate the fear and the distress that that movement, two-and-four movement, causes. So you need to provide that protection. It's very hard. I was working with a rich person in the Bay Area, and he was offering $1,000 to any family that would move from a rural area to an urban area. Just couldn't figure it out in some respects. It's very daunting. And that's the United States. That's also true in the US. So I mean, in the United States, it's much simpler. And you have much more support and protection than you have in our country. So with respect to China, just to turn back to foreign policy, how do you see the India-China relationship evolving over the next, say, five, 10 years? Well, it's not doing too well these days. That's an understatement. Yeah, it's rough right now. I mean, they've occupied some of our territory. It's rough. It's not going to be an easy relationship. Do you see some sort of difference between you and the ruling party right now in China? Because they also seem to be quite tough and consistent. I mean, the question, India cannot be pushed around. So that certainly is not going to be allowed. It's not going to happen. But they are our neighbor. And we have a trade relationship with them. And that's just a fact of life. Do you see a possibility, perhaps, a closer relationship between the US and India? Some people argue that the relationship really should be one of security rather than people-to-people ties, rather than economic. First and foremost, it should be about securing an Indo-Pacific. Do you see a space for that? Or do you think that that might be a concerning dialogue? I think there is room. There is a space for a security relationship. But we have to answer the question of productivity. Because you cannot simply ignore the manufacturing might of China. I mean, you have to compete with them. I don't think it's an option. So what does that competition look like? It, of course, I'm not talking about conflict. I'm talking about competition. How do we create an alternative vision to the production that they're doing? There are complications with having manufacturing in democracies. So how do you deal with those complications? We don't have too many success stories, unfortunately, these post-World War II. Well, you pushed manufacturing out of your country. And you pushed it out partially because you didn't want to deal with the mobilization, labor mobilization that results from large factories. So in a sense, you parceled it out to China. And now you've realized that that was a mistake. But there are political reasons as to why that happened. So that's really the thing. Instead of resolving the conflict between labor and capital in the United States or in the Western world, you parceled it out. And in my view, that was a fatal mistake. I don't think it's one, though. It seems like consumers, especially, they care about prices at the end of the day. We like to think that we care about climate. We care about how people are treated, labor standards. Are you saying that India should compete with China on a price front? Or should India be offering something else? No, I'm saying I think that's black and white. Do you compete on price? Or do you compete on something else? I'm saying that have a vision for manufacturing. Have a vision for what's our problem? Our problem right now is that we have millions of people, millions and millions of people who we simply cannot employ through services. You just don't have the spin-off jobs and services that you have in manufacturing. A car factory produces a whole bunch of auxiliary units, produce another set of auxiliary units. So it's an entire network where you can give many, many more people jobs. So this idea that we can just ignore manufacturing and we can just run a service-based economy. You'll have huge social problems in India. You won't be able to deal with them, because you'll have massive amounts of unemployed people. Which is what we're seeing these days. Unemployment's very high. So exactly. And if you look at unemployment, it's just rising. As manufacturing is dropping, unemployment is rising. It is directly connected. It makes sense. It's a hard thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do. It's much harder, frankly, for the West to do it than for us to do it. But it's got to be done. There's certain elements of it that you will do better than us. There's certain elements of it that we will do better than you. But it's got to be done. Makes sense. In the time remaining, I've collected some questions from students. They were collected prior to your speech. I was hoping for some softball questions on the Yatra. I was the last few nights. I've been binge-watching what you ate and what you did. All of these sorts of lifestyle questions. But alas, Stanford students failed me. They've got some tough questions for you. I find it tough questions. Great. So the first one is from Devan Shama. He's a computer science class of 2024 student. He asks, do you support India's neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war? No, no, by the way, that's not a tough question. That's an easy question. Look, we have a relationship with Russia. We've had a relationship with Russia, and we have certain dependencies in Russia. So I would have a very similar stance as the government of India. I mean, it might not be popular here, but it is what it is. Look, at the end of the day, we have to also look out for our interest. But don't you see a role? I mean, if you've got your interests tied so closely to Russia over time, evolving those interests so that India can stand up on its own two feet to a certain extent a little bit more? I mean, yes. But India is a big enough country whereby it generally will have relationships with other countries. It's not so small that it can just say, OK, we're just going to have a relationship with you and with nobody else. It's actually difficult for us to do. So we will always have these type of relationships. We will have better relationship with some people, evolving relationships with other people. So that balance is there. But to say that, OK, India will not have a relationship with this set of people that's difficult for India to do. And the present government has recognized that the territorial integrity of Ukraine, it is important. And that's something, especially with China on your borders, that you have to be also cognizant of. So their position is colored. It's not a black and white in the case of the government. Next question comes from Arman Sharma, bioengineering class of 2024. Over the last few years, your international presence has skyrocketed. You've delivered message at universities and clubs across US, UK, and more. Here, I'm trying to make Stanford feel special. But unfortunately, we were among the last to get you. When we see struggles between the ruling party and the opposition and other democracies, we hardly ever see the opposition seeking international support outside the foreign ministry. You've gotten rogue, in some respects. No, I'm not seeking support from anybody. I'm very clear that our fight is our fight, right? And the BJP likes to twist this stuff. But no, I'm not seeking support from anybody. But there is a group of young students from India here. And I want to have a relationship with them, and I want to talk to them. And I think it's my right to do it. I mean, I don't understand why the prime minister doesn't come here and do it. Prime Minister Modi, you're welcome at Stanford any time. We would love to have you as well. Come and have a chat. You know what I mean? We've been fortunate to have some. Answer some hard questions. Look, it's important. I'll tell you something. It's important for political people to put themselves in situations like this. Because it's very valuable. It makes us refine our thoughts. It makes us think about things. And the odd question that you can't answer, so what? We're all humans. I mean, we're not gods here. So I'm more than happy to have the occasional slip up. Because I gain a lot. I understand what you're thinking. I understand what you're working on. So to me, it's developing a relationship with young people here. Excellent. We've had a number of BJP politicians come through. Unfortunately for us, not Prime Minister Modi yet. Let me ask one other question. And this is from Reina Bhatia, Bioengineering and International Relations student, class of 2025. So your party has been in opposition for nine years now. And not surprisingly, you've made a number of complaints about how the opposition is excluded from decision making. Say Congress comes back to power. What protections and rights do you think you would extend to the opposition? How would you rebuild these? I think our record is very clear. You can see the record of the UPA government. We didn't do any of this stuff. We were not threatening the opposition. We were not putting cases in the opposition. It's just not something we do. So this is a new style of politics that has come into India. And we certainly don't believe in it. So is it just a political thing, though, or would you institutionalize some protections? I mean, there are institutionalized protections which have been torn apart, right? So yes, it would be strengthening those protections. It would be strengthening the institutional framework. But what is going on back home is not normal. It's not something that has been done even by the BJP before. And do you see parallels? This isn't just an India-specific story. When you read the papers, you hear about declines in democracy. Even in this country, many people talk about declines in democracy. I think, as I said earlier, it's a combination of dramatic increase in connectivity and concentration of power. Well, thank you very much. This has been very illuminating. Please come back to Stanford many times. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Good job. Good job. Thank you.