Rahul Gandhi Attacks Modi In Speech At Princeton University, Says PM Not Doing Enough To Create Jobs

Leaders like Narendra Modi and Donald Trump are being elected all over the world as the people are in pain due to unemployment, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said today, but stressed that even the Prime Minister was not doing enough to solve the key problem facing India.

Gandhi, 47, who is in the US on a two-week-long tour, during his interaction with students at the prestigious Princeton University admitted that the Modi-led NDA government came to power in India as the people were angry with his Congress party over the issue of unemployment. Employment is an all-encompassing means to empower, enfranchise and involve Indians in the nation building process, he said.

"I think, the central reason why Mr Modi arose 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 told students.

He said the another problem is that nobody was recognising that unemployment was a problem. "I do not know Trump. I don't 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 doesn't 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 couldn't deliver on those 30,000 jobs (a day) are going to get angry with Mr Modi. The central question is resolving that problem. My main issue with Mr Modi is that he diverts that issue and points the finger somewhere else instead of saying listen we have a problem," he said. (PTI)