BackRahul slams trickle-down theory
Congress leader says the economic theory won't be successful in India; asserts that the poor is party's votebank
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New Delhi: Congress party vice-president Rahul Gandhi has slammed the trickle-down theory, advocated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P. Chidambaram, saying it will not be successful in a country like India, even as he asserted that the Congress party’s support base is the poor.
Although his comments criticizing the trickle-down theory in economics came in reference to the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candiate Narendra Modi, political observers said the Gandhi scion was airing his different views in public.
“Their (BJP’s) thinking is that the entire focus should be on three or four industrialists and everything else will automatically be sorted out. They believe in the trickle-down effect," Gandhi said in an interview with the Headlines Today television channel. “In the US also, they tried their trickle-down system. If you read that literature, you will know the trickle-down effect failed."
Singh, who was finance minister in the early 1990s when the Indian economy was liberalized, is considered as a believer in the theory that holds that if liberalization measures have re-energized private sector entrepreneurship and yielded a high growth, the benefits will reach at the bottom of the pyramid.
Gandhi’s comments can be seen as his attempt to build an alibi, according to N. Bhaskara Rao, a New Delhi-based political analyst. “In fact, Rahul Gandhi, like his father late Rajiv Gandhi, has always advocated decentralization of power and strengthening the system from the bottom level," Rao said. “He is trying to tell the world that he had differences with the model followed, which is under criticism now."
Gandhi, however, praised the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) record in the last 10 years. “The truth is that we have in our 10 years delivered a much higher growth rate as compared to the five years that the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) was in power. At the end of the day, there has been a global recession and it has caused a slowdown in India as well," he said. “But if you compare, we have fared a lot better than the BJP. And this is the reality."
Gandhi, who gave his second television interview on Saturday since the campaign for the 2014 general election started, admitted that the Congress’s support base is the poor. “The Congress vote base primarily consists of the poor. The BJP vote base consists of corporates. As a result, their marketing abilities are better. Our ability to get results, our programmes, our ability to establish direct contact with the people is better. Generally in every campaign they (BJP) are able to generate more noise," Gandhi said. “The poor, the weak prefer to vote for the Congress party."
The Congress vice-president, who leads the party’s campaign, has severely criticized the BJP’s campaign, terming it as “marketing blitz." He has said his attack on Modi was never personal. “Modi is a personality whose personal issues I am not interested in. But he represents an ideology. This ideology he represents is to make one community fight with another. This ideology is dangerous for India. My fight is against that ideology," he said, adding that he had issues with Modi’s economic ideas. “For one or two or three people to be entrusted with the entire country’s wealth is dangerous. This is what I fight against."
Interestingly, Gandhi said his party’s ideological fight against the Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Samajwadi Party is similar to that of one against the BJP. “We are fighting with the Samajwadi Party. It’s the same fight that we have against the BJP," he said.
The Congress is fighting alone in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh which sends 80 lawmakers to the Lok Sabha. The Congress, which has won 23 seats from Uttar Pradesh in the 2009 national election, is struggling to fight against the popular resentment against it over a series of corruption scandals involving its leaders and its failure to contain rising prices of essential commodities. Opinion polls have predicted a clear edge for the Modi-led BJP.
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