NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is on visit to Columbia on Friday hailed the Indian automobile brands Bajaj, Hero and TVS, saying that some Indian companies can with with ‘innovation’ rather than “cronyism”.
In a post on X, the former Congress president wrote, “Proud to see Bajaj, Hero & TVS do so well in Colombia.”
“Shows Indian companies can win with innovation, not cronyism. Great job,” he added.
He made the remarks while posing for a photograph with the Bajaj Pulsar motorcycle in Columbia.
Rahul Gandhi during his four nation visit of South American countries has once again stirrer a controversy back at home with his comments ‘wholesale attack on Indian democracy’, during an interaction at EIA University in Colombia.
The Gandhi scion stated that the single biggest risk is the attack on democracy that is taking place in India because India has multiple religions, multiple traditions, multiple languages.
“And India actually is a conversation between all its people and different traditions, different religions, different ideas require space. And that the best method for creating that space is the democratic system. And currently there is a wholesale attack on the democratic system in India,” he said.
He also stated that this other big risk is risk between different conceptions, different parts of the country, right?
“Some 16, 17 different languages, different religions. So allowing these different traditions to thrive, giving them space to express themselves is very important for a country like India. We can’t do what China does, which is suppress people and run authoritarian system. Our design just will not accept that,” he said while drawing parallels with China.
Most of the people, for example, who are creating polarisation in the US with Mr (Donald) Trump are those who lost their jobs because of manufacturing. China has demonstrated to the world how you can manage production in a non-democratic setup, but we cannot do that; we are a democratic setup. The challenge is whether we can develop manufacturing like China but within a democratic setup, he added.
However, he was soon targeted by the BJP for his comments as they accused him of maligning India’s image during his foreign visits.
