Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul Gandhi promises to take up people’s concerns

Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul Gandhi promises to take up people’s concerns

KOCHI: Rahul Gandhi interacted with a cross-section of Kochi’s population — from IT professionals to leading doctors, film fraternity to rubber growers, political analysts to transgender people — as his Bharat Jodo Yatra entered the city on Wednesday.

At the meeting, the former Congress president took a slew of questions ranging from brain drain of youth from Kerala, to red tape for industries, fall in rubber prices and the worrisome GDP trends. On red-tapism, Rahul said red tape is faced only by medium, small and micro enterprises and not by the chosen few of the BJP whom the Union government favours. Asked to name a few companies that do not face any red-tapism, Rahul instantaneously named Ambani, Adani, Patanjali, and Paytm.

Rahul said handling data as a strategic source is extremely vital to a conducive environment for industrial growth. He also said he will take up the issues faced by rubber and spice growers, and environmental concerns in parliament. “Our job as politicians is to provide optimal solutions to the diametrically opposite concerns and demands of our people to strike a balance between the IT sector and farmers,” Rahul said.

Advocate Jayashankar, who was among the group of people invited to interact with Rahul, told him that the Opposition unity is the need of the hour and Congress which is the only party that represents the idea of India should take the lead in such an effort. Responding to this, Rahul said the conflict between massive centralisation and a plural India has been playing itself out over thousands of years.

“People like Mahatma Gandhi encapsulated the values of a plural India in the last century, also people like Narayana Guruji encapsulated the same set of values for Kerala,” he said. Some of the people who were invited to the luncheon meeting with Rahul included P V Gangadharan, Dr Jose Chacko Periyapuram, K L Mohanavarma, Dr Tony Fernandez, Venu Ramachandran, Raju Apsara, Chitharesh Nadeshan, Abdul Azeez and Edavela Babu.

Courtesy : TNIE

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