Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mastered the "art of slogans" but offers no solutions, and claimed that India's manufacturing was at a record low despite the 'Make in India' initiative.
"'Make in India' promised a factory boom. So why is manufacturing at record lows, youth unemployment at record highs, and why have imports from China more than doubled?
"Modi ji has mastered the art of slogans, not solutions. Since 2014, manufacturing has fallen to 14 per cent of our economy," he said in a post on X.
Gandhi, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, said Modi has "no new ideas" and has "surrendered".
"Even the much-hyped PLI scheme is now being quietly rolled back," he alleged.
Gandhi said India needs a fundamental shift, one that empowers lakhs of producers through honest reforms and financial support.
"We must stop being a market for others. If we don't build here, we'll keep buying from those who do. The clock is ticking," he said.
Gandhi met mobile repair technicians at Nehru Place, Delhi and attached a video of the conversation to the post.
"In Nehru Place, New Delhi, I met Shivam and Saif - bright, skilled, full of promise - yet denied the opportunity to fulfil it.
Noting that there is a difference between 'Made in India' and 'Assembled in India', he said: "The truth is stark: we assemble, we import, but we don't build. China profits."
"China is the world's electronic market. There is no other electronic market anywhere. Assembly as many iPhones as you want, all you are doing is giving money to the big oligopolies of India. Start making iPhones, it's a completely different ball game," he said in the video.
The former Congress chief said to manufacture parts, whether it is a motherboard or "small pieces", you need a certain level of machining, a certain level of quality, a certain level of understanding of tolerances of working with small components.
"That is a learnt skill. That is not something you can get in just two minutes. Until you start respecting the idea of physical labour, the man who is doing that work...But we have no respect for that guy on the street who is sitting there, selling his things, for hours together...
"And, at the centre of it, and people don't like it when I say it, and at the centre of it is the idea of caste. We need to make this transparent. We need to show exactly how Indian society distributes power, exactly how Indian society distributes respect," Gandhi observed.
Rahul Gandhi and the Congress have raised the issue of conducting a nationwide caste census to ascertain if various castes in society have a proportionate "share" of power.
