Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said India, the US and other countries in the West are facing unemployment problems while China is not because it dominates global production. He stressed the need to focus on manufacturing in India.
While interacting with students at the University of Texas at Dallas on Sunday, Mr Gandhi said there is no dearth of skills in India and the country can compete with China if it starts preparing itself for production.
He stressed the need to promote vocational training to bridge the gap between the business system and the education system and also expressed concern about the “ideological capture” of the education system.
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Mr Gandhi is on a four-day informal US visit during which he will stop in Dallas, Texas, and Washington DC to interact with the Indian diaspora and youth. He also plans to meet lawmakers and senior US government officials during his visit to Washington DC starting Monday.
He arrived in Dallas on Saturday night and was welcomed by dozens of members of the Indian-American community led by senior Congress leader Sam Pitroda and Indian National Overseas Congress, USA president Mohinder Gilzian.
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“The West has an employment problem. India has an employment problem… but many countries in the world don’t have an employment problem. China certainly doesn’t have an employment problem. Vietnam doesn’t have an employment problem,” Mr Gandhi said.
He said, “If you look at the United States in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, they were the centre of global production. Whatever was made, (be it cars, washing machines or TVs), was made in the United States. Production shifted from the United States. It went to Korea and then to Japan. Eventually it went to China. If you look today, China dominates global production.”
The West, America, Europe and India have “abandoned the idea of production” and have handed it over to China.
“The function of production creates employment. What we do, what the Americans do, what the West does, is that we organize consumption… India has to think about the function of production and organizing production…”
“It is not acceptable for India to simply say okay, manufacturing, whatever you call manufacturing or production, it will be the prerogative of the Chinese. It will be the prerogative of the Vietnamese. It will be the prerogative of Bangladesh,” Mr Gandhi said.
He stressed the need to encourage manufacturing.
He said, “Unless we do that, we will continue to face high levels of unemployment. And frankly, that is not sustainable. So, you will see that if we continue on this path of forgetting manufacturing, you will see massive social problems coming up in India and the United States and Europe. That is why our politics is so polarised…”
According to the opposition leader, there is no shortage of skills in India.
He said, “Many people say that India has a skills problem. I don’t think there is any skills problem in India. I think… there is no respect for people with skills in India.”
Mr Gandhi said there is a need to link the education system with the business system through vocational training.
He said, “It is fundamental to bridge this gap or link these two systems, skills and education, through vocational training. I think the biggest problem with the education system at present is ideological capture, where ideology is being nurtured through it…”
He said that he was confident that if India prepares itself for production and starts respecting skills, it can compete with China.
“I am fully convinced by that. States like Tamil Nadu have already done it. It is not that Indian states have not done it. Pune has done it. Maharashtra has done it. So, it is being done, but it is not being done with the scale and coordination that is needed,” Mr Gandhi said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
