Rahul Gandhi talks jobs, intolerance in US, impresses experts

Washington: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has said that intolerance and unemployment are the key issues that pose a serious challenge to India’s national security and development.

Mr Gandhi, who is in the US on a two-week-long tour, held a series of meetings, including a roundtable with eminent Indian/South Asia experts hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Democratic-leaning think tank. Prominent among the attendees were CAP head Neera Tandon and Hillary Clinton’s top campaign advisor John Podesta.

During his meeting with US Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Thomas J. Donohue, Mr Gandhi expressed concern over the inability of the government to create jobs in India, which he felt was leading the country towards a dangerous situation.

Mr Gandhi also had an off-the-record interaction with the editorial board of the Washington Post, where he shared his anguish over the rising intolerance globally, but in particularly in India.

Later in the evening, Mr Gandhi had another closed-door meeting co-hosted by Republican strategist Puneet Ahluwalia and American Foreign Policy Institute.

“I would say, he did not seem to be somebody who did not understand the issue. He has an understanding of the issue. He came across as more of a grassroot understanding leader. Everybody when they left they were pretty much very positive with the interaction,” Mr Ahluwalia said.

Participants at these meetings overwhelmingly agreed with Mr Gandhi that the “central challenge” in front of India was jobs and intolerance, and they were generally impressed with his knowledge, clarity of thoughts and candidness.

Mr Gandhi’s US tour has been planned as the start of a “new conversation” by the Congress with the goal of changing the narrative about a leader widely misunderstood and wrongly defined by the BJP’s online troll “machine”.