Rahul slams lynchings; BJP hits back
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said mob lynchings and attacks on Dalits and minorities reflected the anger that currently pervaded India’s society because of growing joblessness and the Narendra Modi government taking away protections provided to the country’s poor. He said the Modi government’s demonetisation and poorly implemented goods and services tax (GST) have destroyed the informal economy and killed jobs in the small and medium businesses, which contributed to this anger.
Addressing a gathering at the Bucerius Summer School at Hamburg in Germany, of which Rahul Gandhi is an alumnus, the Congress president pointed to the example of the rise of the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria to caution that excluding a large number of people from the development process could lead to creation of insurgent groups anywhere in the world.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) picked on Rahul Gandhi’s comments to allege the Congress chief was not only belittling and insulting India abroad, but also justifying terrorism. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said Rahul “lied through his teeth” in his criticism of the Modi government. Patra asked whether Gandhi's submission was that minorities in India would “sell their soul” to IS if jobs are not available for them, and this amounted to “denigrating” the community. The BJP spokesperson said he wondered whether the data on job growth was “made in 10, Janpath”. However, Gandhi’s speech was more nuanced as he spoke of the discrimination that lower castes faced in Indian villages, and how “protections” like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Right to Food, Forest Rights Act, helped transform Indian villages.
He said these protections allowed poor in rural areas social and economic mobility, where they could go to urban areas to find work for some months and then return to their villages.