Unemployment reason for Modi’s rise: Rahul

Gandhi, 47, who is in the US on a two-week-long tour, during his interaction with students at the prestigious Princeton University said employment was an all-encompassing means to empower, enfranchise and involve Indians in the nation building process.

“I think, the central reason why Mr Modi rose and to an extent why Mr Trump came, is the question of jobs in India and in the United States. There’s a large part of our populations that simply do not have jobs and cannot see a future. And, so they are feeling pain. And they have supported these type of leaders,” Gandhi said.

He said the another problem is that nobody was recognising that unemployment was a problem. 

“I do not know Trump. I dont go there. But, certainly our prime minister is not doing enough (in creating jobs),” said the Congress leader. Gandhi has repeatedly raised the issue of joblessness during his meetings with experts, business leaders and Congressmen in the US. 

“Currently, we are not producing enough jobs. 30,000 new youngsters are joining the job market every single day and yet the government is only creating 500 jobs a day. And this doesnt include the massive pool of already unemployed youngsters,” Gandhi had said in his earlier address at the University of California in Berkeley.At Princeton, Gandhi said India needed to transform itself to compete with China and for that the people in the country required jobs. 

“Those same people who got angry with us because we couldnt deliver on those 30,000 jobs (a day) are going to get angry with Mr Modi... There is anger building up in India right now. We can sense it. So to me the challenge is how to solve that job growth problem in a democratic environment. That’s the challenge,” he said.