(MENAFN- Gulf Times) IANS/Tankara, Gujarat
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi yesterday held out an assurance that if voted to power in Gujarat and subsequently in the country his party would provide a government for the poor, the farmers and small-scale industry unlike the present regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On the second day of his three-day election campaign in Gujarat's Saurashtra region, Gandhi said the 'much-touted Gujarat model is about the government working for the interests of a handful of corporates at the cost of the farmers, the poor and the small businesses.
He was addressing a public gathering on the outskirts of Tankara town in Morbi district attended by around 20,000 people, who had waited some two hours under a scorching sun.
'The true Gujarat model is the Sardar Patel model, the Amul model which the women of Gujarat gave to create a white revolution; not just one individual. It is the kisan (farmer) welfare model and it is the model of small and medium scale businessmen, the Congress leader said.
It was this 'old model which had been completely dismantled now, Gandhi added.
'The Congress Party had Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, B R Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru. They had agreement over issues, but had different thought processes. The Congress pooled all the thoughts together, the Gandhi scion said. 'The Congress Party has joined the people and various schools of thought. This is how it works. The party listens to the people and tries to understand their issues, instead of imposing on the country what it thinks is right, he said.
He said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party 'does not listen to people; it has already decided what is right and what is wrong on its own without consulting the people. They think they have all the knowledge. They have assumed the role of a loudspeaker and go on dishing out their self-righteousness.
'They give good bhashan (lectures and speeches), do good marketing, but little work, he said.
Trying to strike up a conversation with the crowd that heard him in rapt attention, the Congress vice president said, 'Come on, I will ask you a few questions. Do you want demonetisation? The people responded, almost in unison, 'Nahi, nahi (no, no). The response was similar when asked about the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
'See, you don't want it. But nobody came to ask you. The Congress Party does, he said.
Building on this, Gandhi went on to taunt the BJP leadership for taking 'unilateral decisions without consultations and homework.
He said: 'Suddenly one day, Narendra Modi didn't like the look of Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes and he cheerfully disbanded them.
Asserting that a Congress government would have never taken such a decision, Gandhi reminded the people how demonetisation had sounded the 'death knell of the famous ceramics industry of the region.
He said millions of farmers, labourers and small shop keepers who run their economy on cash were pushed into a deep crisis by one single decision of an individual.
'Narendra Modi-ji did not ask anyone before imposing demonetisation on the country. The RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan was not asked, the finance minister was not consulted, the chief economic adviser of the government was not informed, he added.
'What was the net result? Did the black money come back? On the contrary, the truth is that demonetisation was used to convert huge amounts of black money into white, he said.
Meanwhile in New Delhi, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) termed as 'hypocrisy Modi's stand of 'no compromise or leniency on corruption and demanded to know why the government had not moved ahead on Lokpal or probed scams like Vyapam and the Sahara-Birla diaries.
Modi on Tuesday reiterated at the BJP's National Executive meeting that there would be no compromise or leniency on corruption.
'The hypocrisy of the prime minister and the BJP government lies in the fact that while they are pursuing corruption cases against leaders of the opposition, this government in these three years has not even implemented the law enacted by the parliament to establish the Lokpal, the CPM said in a statement.
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