After the colossal failure of the Congress party’s ‘Gareebi Hatao’ slogan over the years, the party prince Rahul Gandhi has come up with the promise of “wealth redistribution” to eradicate poverty and socio-economic inequality. On the 6th of April, Rahul Gandhi said that if voted to power, Congress would conduct a financial and institutional survey to ascertain who is in possession of wealth in the country. The Gandhi scion said that his party would then redistribute the wealth to the backward castes and ‘minorities’ based on their population, on the basis of caste census data.
During a public rally in Hyderabad, Rahul Gandhi, stressing on the party’s “Jitni aabaadi utna haq” slogan said, “We will first conduct a nationwide caste census to determine how many people belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and minorities. After that, we will conduct a financial and institutional survey in a historic step to ascertain the distribution of wealth.”
LIVE: Shri @RahulGandhi launches the Congress manifesto and addresses the public in Hyderabad, Telangana. https://t.co/WRC3IYnLLq
— Congress (@INCIndia) April 6, 2024
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘wealth redistribution’ remark has sparked an online debate with many criticising the Gandhi scion and even suggesting him to first redistribute the wealth of his own affluent party leaders.
Pointing out at Congress leader Nakul Nath’s assets worth Rs 700 crore and DK Shivakumar’s assets worth Rs 14,13 crore, an X @TheHawkEye wrote, “Why doesn’t Rahul Gandhi start wealth redistribution in his own backyard?
Why doesn't Rahul Gandhi start wealth redistribution in his backyard? pic.twitter.com/unrNbXWii9
— The Hawk Eye (@thehawkeyex) April 8, 2024
Another one wrote, “Don’t wait for Elections @RahulGandhi Lead the way and redistribute the wealth of your Family first, including wealth stashed and owned abroad to People in Bharat. Put out a list by tomorrow. Surely you have the details which your Patel uncle probably maintained well.”
Don't wait for Elections @RahulGandhi
— Colonel Rohit Dev (RDX) 🇮🇳 (@RDXThinksThat) April 7, 2024
Lead the way and redistribute the wealth of your Family first, including wealth stashed and owned abroad to People in Bharat
Put out a list by tomorrow
Surely you have the details which your Patel uncle probably maintained well
Follow Up… pic.twitter.com/ZbrGODSh0H
Interestingly, this very idea of wealth distribution comes from Communist ideology. Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto said that wealth should be distributed as according to the precepts, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. ”
Notably, the Congress party in its manifesto for the coming Lok Sabha elections has that it will “conduct a nation-wide Socio-Economic and Caste Census to enumerate the castes and sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions. Based on the data, we will strengthen the agenda for affirmative action.”
If Rahul Gandhi is so keen on redistributing wealth to backward castes and minorities, then he himself should set a precedent and distribute his personal wealth among the sections of society he listed out. Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party have been attacking business mammoths Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. The party has also been in attacking mode against Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of crony capitalism by favouring his ‘friends’ Adani-Ambani. This comes despite his own party leader and Telangana CM Revanth Reddy having recently signed three MoUs with Adani conglomerate.
While Rahul Gandhi has been accusing billionaires like Adani Ambani of ‘controlling’ wealth and resources and despising the corporate sector, in the last five years, the value of total assets of Rahul Gandhi has gone up by over 28%, from over ₹15 crore in 2019 to over ₹20 crore in 2024. Therefore, he has become richer by over ₹6 crore in the last 5 years.
Moreover, as OpIndia reported earlier, Rahul Gandhi has seen a steep hike in the value of his total declared assets in the last 20 years, which was just above ₹55 lakh in 2004, and has gone up to over ₹20 crore last year, an increase of 3583%. Probably, Congress’s ‘JanNayak’ can hoard wealth but Adani-Ambani should not.
Interestingly, much before Rahul Gandhi, it was Duggal Sahab of political activism Yogendra Yadav and IAS-turned-social activist Harsh Mander alongside other ‘intellectuals’ who had pushed for ‘taking over’ private property.
‘Mission Jai Hind’: When Yogendra Yadav suggested taking over private property to fight Coronavirus
Back in 2020, when the country battling the Covid pandemic, Yogendra Yadav along with several ‘economists, intellectuals and activists’ had proposed a 7-point action plan to combat the pandemic. In this, point number 7.1 had called for the government to take over all properties of private citizens and treat them as national resources. The point said, “All the resources (cash, real estate, property, bonds, etc) with the citizens or within the nation must be treated as national resources available during this crisis.”
Ironically, this ‘action plan’ pushing the country towards economic anarchy while it was already tackling a health crisis was named ‘Mission Jai Hind’. To no surprise, this plan had received severe backlash back then to the extent that Yogendra Yadav and his fellow ‘intellectuals’ had to backtrack.
Consequently, Yadav amended the said proposition claiming that the original point received ‘undue attention’ and was far from their intention. “The government must explore emergency ways of raising resources going beyond the usual set of taxes and levies to cope with the problem of funding large relief packages,” the changed proposal read.
Caste census, Jitni aabaadi utna haq, vilification of India’s wealth generators: Rahul Gandhi’s divisive politics will push India into anarchy and multi-faceted crisis
While conducting a nationwide caste census and redistributing wealth on the basis of its findings may seem a ‘revolutionary’ and vote-catching promise, it will eventually leave the country in economic and social crisis.
On one hand, the Modi government has pulled out over 24.82 crore people from multi-dimensional poverty in the last nine years from 29.17% in 2013-14 to 11.28% in 2022-23 i.e. a reduction of 17.89 percentage points without even bringing the caste in context. On the other, Rahul Gandhi is more interested in determining the caste of Indians than working for people irrespective of their caste, religion or regional identities.
Caste-based census might serve the electoral ambitions of the Congress party but it will certainly further the societal rifts and also trigger caste wars. While the Modi government through its policies and works has managed to significantly shift the electoral politics from caste lines to development, Rahul Gandhi is hell-bent on re-mainstreaming caste-based politics.
Redistribution of wealth to elevate living standards although sounds like a utopian communist dream-like scenario, in reality, it will obstruct the country’s sustainable development. Instead of wealth redistribution, the focus of a developing country like India should be on raising average income to ensure decent living standards. Education and employment growth coupled with improved job quality will consequently raise the standard of living overall without having a requirement to go into the “Kaun jaat ho?” mode.
Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly been attacking PM Modi and the BJP government saying that they are spreading ‘hatred’ and dividing the country, however, his actions and poll promises expose his party’s nefarious agenda. The Congress party is pushing the narrative that the business mammoths of the country are somehow the ‘villains’ who along with PM Modi have deprived the backward castes and ‘minority’ groups of their rights over wealth and resources even though they are much higher in population.
Looks like Rahul Gandhi has taken a page from Yogendra Yadav’s book on a warped sense of socio-economic equality to project himself as the messiah of the poor and marginalised. Gandhi has been wooing the Dalit, Adivasi and religious minorities as if the other sections of the society were not that important or maybe thought they were not organised enough to form a consolidated vote bank. However, much like Yogendra Yadav, Rahul Gandhi will also have to backtrack, sideline or simply forget the wealth redistribution promise just like it ignored its Old Pension Scheme restoration promise in its manifesto if though highly unlikely, voted to power.
Redistributing wealth by snatching it away from those who earned it and giving it away to specific caste groups and religious minorities is blatant appeasement. Moreover, to even redistribute wealth it first needs to be created. How will the Congress party keep redistributing wealth? Where will the wealth come from? Congress party instead of working to empower these communities by increasing equal job and educational opportunities wants to make them dependent on the government and the wealth of others. When people like Adani Ambani become billionaires, they invest in the economic growth of the country in various sectors in addition to providing employment to lakhs of people across the country without asking about anyone’s caste, religion or regional identity.
From pushing for population control and raising slogans like “Hum do humaare do” to exploiting demography with sinister “Jitni aabaadi utna haq” assertions, the Congress party has apparently deviated from its own principles. After failing in its much-hyped Gareebi Hatao campaign, though winning elections, the Congress party has stooped to “Ameer Hatao” to go beyond 40 seats in the coming elections. Slogans changed, leaders changed but the tactics of caste-based politics and appeasement of specific communities have remained the same.
