‘Make in India has failed’: Rahul Gandhi during Motion of Thanks to President’s address

NEW DELHI: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday claimed that the Make in India initiative has failed. Rahul Gandhi was speaking in the Lok Sabha during the Motion of Thanks (MoT) to the President’s address.

He stated that he did not find anything new in the Presidential address delivered at the inauguration of the Budget session. “I heard the President’s address. I sat there with Kharge Ji, and I listened to it. I must say, I struggled through the President’s address to maintain my attention on what was being said because I had heard pretty much the same Presidential address last time, the time before that, and the time before that,” Rahul Gandhi said.

“It was the same list of things the government has done. ‘We’ve done this, we’ve done that’… 50 or 100 things the government has done”, he added. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘Okay, I’m being critical of what is being said. I’m saying that this is not the type of address that should be delivered.’ Then a question came to my mind: What type of Presidential address should be delivered, and how would that address be different from what we heard?” he further suggested.

Rahul Gandhi emphasised the need to focus on the country’s production in his address, saying, “Today, I would lay out some dimensions of what an alternative address would look like, what the INDIA bloc would probably focus on, and where we would lay emphasis. The future of the country will be decided by the youth of the country”.

#BudgetSession2025 | Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says “The Prime Minister proposed the ‘Make in India’ program, I think it was a good idea…The result is right in front of you, manufacturing fell from 15.3% of GDP in 2014 to 12.6% of GDP today, which is the lowest… pic.twitter.com/tyhkT79rvu

— ANI (@ANI) February 3, 2025

“So, I think anything we say has to address them. The first thing in front of us that the PM would accept, and everyone in this room would accept, is that we have grown fast; we are growing now, but we are still growing. A universal problem we have faced is that we have not been able to tackle the problem of unemployment”, he added.

“Neither the UPA government nor the NDA government has given a clear-cut answer to youth unemployment. I don’t think anybody will disagree with that,” Rahul Gandhi stated. He pointed out that the share of production in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has decreased from 15.3 per cent in 2014 to 12.6 per cent in 2025.

“The PM proposed the Make in India program. I think it was a good idea; we saw the statue, we saw the logo, we saw the investment, and the result is right in front of you. Manufacturing fell from 15.3 per cent of GDP in 2014 to 12.6 per cent of GDP today. That is the lowest share of manufacturing in history”, he stated.

He said he would not blame this on the Prime Minister, as it would be unfair to say that the effort was lacking. “Gandhi stated that ‘Make in India’ was a good idea, but it is pretty clear that it failed. I would not blame this on the Prime Minister; it is unfair to say that he did not try. I think the Prime Minister tried, and I think conceptually, Make in India was a good idea, but it is pretty clear that it failed”, he said.

“The first question the alternative vision would answer to the youth of our country is how to solve this problem of employment. Any country essentially organizes two things: you can organize consumption, and you can organize production”, he added. “Pretty much every government since 1990 has done a decent job in consumption. But as a country, we have failed in organizing production,” Rahul Gandhi said.

“The record of the country in organizing production is dismal, and essentially what we have done is hand over the organization of production to China. Even though we say we make this phone in India, it’s not a fact. This phone is not made in India; it’s assembled in India,” the Leader of Opposition further added.

Holding up his phone in the Lok Sabha, he said, “All the components of this phone are made in China. The network that is produced is made in China. So whenever we use a phone or wear a Chinese T-shirt, or a Bangladeshi T-shirt, or wear a pair of Chinese sneakers, we are paying tax to China because some Chinese youngster is earning to make that product.”

“So the first message I would give in a Presidential address is to focus completely on production”. He further stated that if we do not focus on production and only focus on consumption, we will find that we will run a huge deficit, increase inequality, and run into serious problems.

“I would like to tell all the youngsters of the country that there is an exciting revolution taking place. The heart of the changing world is that we are moving from the world of the internal combustion engine to electric motors. We are moving from petrol to batteries. We are moving to wind, solar, and potentially nuclear energy,” the Congress leader further said.

He highlighted that the then Congress government “rode” the computer revolution. “The last time there was a revolution was called the computer revolution. The government of India had a clear focus; we looked at that revolution. It was a Congress government, and we decided we were going to focus on the development of software, and we rode that wave of that revolution. Today, you can see the result. I remember people laughing”, Gandhi stated.

He also referenced the Russia-Ukraine war, noting, “I said that the revolution is going to change everything. A war is going on in Ukraine. The actual war is between an internal combustion machine and the motor. The electric motor is inside the drone, and the machine is in the tank. If you look at what’s going on in Ukraine, the tanks are dying by the thousands, while small drones are destroying the tanks and the entire artillery of Russia and Ukraine”, the Opposition leader further added. (ANI)