Govt operating on the belief that it doesn’t need to listen to anybody: Rahul

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the BJP-led Centre has “shut down the feedback loop” which was there to gauge and sense the response and reaction of the people on various issues of governance, and alleged that the government is operating on the belief that it doesn’t need to listen to anybody since it controls the media space and the narrative.

Gandhi made the remarks during an interaction with former American diplomat Nicholas Burns, who is now with the Harvard Kennedy School.

Gandhi said a lot of people are getting discontented because of the way the BJP is behaving. “It is very happening very quickly. So the opportunity for us is very huge. We have to redefine ourselves though,” he said, without elaborating how he plans to redefine the Congress.

He said the Congress, when it was in power, would get “constant feedback” on “a pressure coming at us” – be it from farmers, labourers or the big business. “There was a feedback loop…What amazed me was how quick, how effective and how powerful it was. It was right in our face. We almost couldn’t avoid it. And that feedback loop is now shut.

“The ability to put your message so forcefully when you control the media automatically stops you from listening…. And it puts you in a mindset… ‘I control the media space, I control the narrative …so I don’t really need to listen to anybody’ and that is how you operate,” he said.

“…It is a style of governance… It comes from a centralisation of power and a belief that centralised power understands everything,” he said.