Congress failed to create jobs; PM's 'Make in India' helping big businesses only: Rahul Gandhi

Princeton: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who is currently touring the United States, has admitted that the previous governments led by his party failed to create jobs.

While interacting with the students at the Princeton University, the Gandhi scion said ''creation of jobs'' is the biggest challenge that India faces right now. However, the Congress No 2 was quick in highlighting that even the incumbent Narendra Modi-led BJP has failed to provide Indian youth with jobs.

Unlike his previous interaction with students at the University of Berkley, California, Rahul's speech this time largely focussed on jobs, employment, economic slowdown and GST.

Attacking PM Modi, the Congress vice-president said that his government's flagship 'Make in India' programme is not garnering the right people, instead it is helping the big businesses.

While asserting that the NDA's initiative should help small businesses prosper, Rahul said, "In my view, the highlight of the `Make in India` concept and the target of the `Make in India` concept should be different. So, the Prime Minister feels that target of the concept should be large businesses. I feel that the concept should be targeting the smaller businesses.''

Shifting his focus to US-India ties, the Congress leader said that there was "a lot of synergy" between the two countries. Gandhi said there's a lot of space for cooperation between the United States and India in the creation of jobs and in the education sector.

Rahul, however, stated that notwithstanding the path chosen by them, the performance of India and China would determine how the world would fundamentally be reshaped.

"There are two large migrations taking place - one is completely free and the other is centrally controlled. The systems respond differently. India and China are two huge countries that are transforming from agricultural countries to urban modern model countries. And that's a huge chunk of the world population," Gandhi said in his interaction at the Princeton University.

"And how these two countries do is going to fundamentally reshape the world. It's not my place to say that China should be democratic or not. They have chosen their path and we have chosen ours," he said.

But there is "cooperation and there is competition" between the two most populous countries of the world. "We have to figure out how to get our jobs. We have to basically compete with China," he said, adding that frankly India is not doing that well.

China, he said, is entering spaces with One Belt, One Road (OBOR) venture.

"And China has a particular vision of the world. It's very clear. And from their perspective it's a very powerful vision," he said.

Gandhi also raised a series of questions for India that he sought to be answered.

"Does India has a similar vision? What does that vision look like? How much cooperation is going to be between us and them? These are basically the fundamental questions going forward. But the thing to realise is that China is moving with tremendous power and we have to work with that," he said.