‘Massive undercurrent’, 2024 win tough for BJP: Congress leader Rahul

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said BJP will find it very difficult to win the 2024 elections as there is a “massive undercurrent” against the party, but added that the opposition will have to coordinate well and present an “alternative vision” for the country to exploit the popular mood.
Rahul also accused the Modi government of hiding behind the armed forces and politically using them, and asked it to own up its mistakes and take correctives in view of preparations being made by China and Pakistan. He said the two hostile neighbours have “become one”, which is a “dangerous development”, and the Doklam incident and Ladakh incursions suggest that they are preparing for some big action.

Addressing a press conference on new year eve, Rahul said there is “need for a central ideological framework, which only Congress can provide”, and which regional parties do not have, citing the example of Samajwadi Party which has a “positioning in UP”, but whose idea will not work in Kerala or Karnataka or Bihar.
Rahul said there has to be mutual respect between like-minded parties, and Congress too needs to make the opposition parties comfortable, as he outlined the imperative of anti-BJP parties joining hands based on an “alternative vision for the country” and not just a “tactical” alliance to fight elections.

About his experience of the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the political situation, Rahul said, “I think if the opposition stands effectively with a vision, what I am hearing and seeing from the ground, it will be very difficult the BJP to win. But the opposition has to coordinate properly and the opposition has to go to the people of India with an alternative vision. There is a huge undercurrent against the BJP, a massive undercurrent.”
In the backdrop of BJP alleging that Rahul’s critical comments on border issues were hurting the morale of soldiers, the Congress leader said, “There is a difference between government and army. The government has taken bad decisions and it should not hide behind Army and Navy. This is cowardice. The government should accept its mistakes… the entire opposition will help the government.” To prepare strategically, he said, the government has to take non-military precautions and call out China for having entered into Indian territory as against the prime minister’s claim that “nobody has come inside India”.
Rahul said he is from a “family of martyrs”, unlike BJP, as his father and grandmother lost their lives for the country, and that he understands the problems of soldiers and their families.

The Gandhi scion also said that “destroying Indian values” and making “Indians fight with one another, hatred” was being watched by other countries who try to benefit from it. He termed the foreign policy as “non-strategic and event-based” and “confused”, and the national cause was also being harmed by “hatred, violence and chaos” in the country. He said “Indian values and philosophy” was what made US and Soviet Union and others take India seriously when it was not powerful — when Mahatma Gandhi started speaking about freedom struggle. He said the country till UPA-2 had successfully achieved its chief foreign policy objective of keeping China and Pakistan apart.
About opposition parties, Rahul said they share an ideological brotherhood, specifically naming SP and BSP chief Mayawati, but there are compulsions that can keep them away from Bharat Jodo Yatra. He also rebuffed Akhilesh Yadav’s comment that “Congress and BJP are the same”, saying if they were one, then BJP would not speak about “Congress-mukt Bharat”.
Asked about his vision for the country, Rahul said India should shift to a “production nation” from a “rent-seeking” nation. He said the education policy is not giving the desired “imagination” to children, who have limited ambitions of becoming doctors, engineers, judges, civil servants and lawyers, as he quoted his conversations with scores of children during the Yatra.