The Congress party on Tuesday shared a video of leader Rahul Gandhi from his visit to a BMW factory in Germany, where he reflected on the global transition in mobility, India's manufacturing potential, and the need for a new growth model focused on production and jobs.
In the video posted on X, Gandhi said the automobile major was grappling with the shift from internal combustion engines to electric mobility, a transition he said was reshaping industries worldwide.
Highlighting China's progress in electric vehicles, Gandhi said the shift to a different form of mobility has given Beijing a major competitive edge. He added that countries like India, which still have large-scale infrastructure to build, have the opportunity to chart a different path.
"Look at what China has done in electric vehicles. Using a different form of mobility, they now have a huge competitive advantage. So for countries like ours, where we have a lot of infrastructure to build, and we have large scale, we can actually do quite interesting things," he said.
Taking a swipe at the BJP-led central government, the Congress leader alleged that current policies have discouraged manufacturing and concentrated economic power among a few large corporate groups. He asserted that manufacturing is the only way to generate jobs at scale in a country like India. Gandhi further alleged that large corporate houses are more focused on trading than production, leading to a heavy dependence on imported goods, particularly from China.
"There is only one way that you can produce jobs at scale for a country like India and that is manufacturing. What the BJP has done they have completely disincentivized manufacturing. When they concentrate power into the hands of three or four oligarchs, the Ambanis and Adani's of the world, these are not guys who are interested in manufacturing, they're trading companies, they're not producing companies. Most of them are selling Chinese products in India. Look around you, you'll see that pretty much everything that you're using is made in China and that, at least for a country like India, is a problem. We have the capability to produce, we have the population to produce, we have the cost structure to produce," he said while addressing a gathering at the Hertie School in Berlin during his Germany's visit.
He said India has the population, capability, and cost structure required to become a major manufacturing hub and called for a new growth model that balances production with democratic values, environmental responsibility, and social inclusion.
"We have the capability to produce, we have the population to produce, we have the cost structure to produce. What does the next model of Indian growth look like? It has to have production, right? It has to have a production that occurs in a democratic environment. It has to have a vision for the environment. It has to have a vision for the weaker sections of society, with the more marginalised sections of society. But it has to create prosperity," he added.