On a day when the Congress put up a no-show in Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told the University of Cambridge that Indian democracy is “under pressure and under attack”.
“Negotiations are coming under attack. Here you can see the picture taken in front of Parliament, where a bunch of opposition leaders are taking up the issue and we were just locked up and that’s put up in jail and that happened three-four times and that also relatively violently,” the Wayanad MP said addressing the audience on the topic of “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”.
He added, “You also heard attack on minority, attack on press. So you got the sense what is happening.” He argued that “the art of listening” when done consistently and diligently is “very powerful”.
Earlier on Tuesday, he told the MBA students, “We simply cannot afford a planet that doesn’t produce under democratic systems.” “So we need new thinking about how you produce in a democratic environment compared to a coercive environment,” and a “negotiation about this”.
The Gandhi scion’s criticism of the central government comes on a day when the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was negligent in the northeast till 2016, swept Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya — either through individual gains or through allies.
On the other hand, the Congress has been losing control of every region, poll by poll. As the results for the three northeastern states began on pour in on Thursday, the first reaction from the Grand Old Party was evasive and hinted at damage control.
“The trend normally is that the party which is in power at the Centre wins these polls in Northeast,” said the leaders. This, however, completely obliterated the fact that for the many decades of Left reign in Tripura, the party was never in power at the Centre.
With inputs from News18
