Thrissur, Sep 24 (UNI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Saturday charged Prime Minister Narendra Modi with spreading hatred and violence in the country to distract the attention of the people from the burning issues of unemployment and price rise.
"Mr Modi is running his government not for the poor and common man but for the rich five or six people.The farmers, youths and small scale businessmen are not even able to dream of a good life", Mr Rahul Gandhi said at a public meeting in Thrissur where he entered on the second day of his Bharat Jodo yatra.
Modi is taking out money from the pocket of the common man and giving it to his "crony capitalist friends". He is clearing the way for big businessmen" by "smashing" the small businesses and entrepreneurs through his various economic policies like demonetisation and flawed implementation of GST.
Addressing a massive crowd of people who had turned up to hear him at the Thekinakadu Maidan ,the Congress leader said Thrissur district alone had some 300 gold manufacturing units engaging 1.5 lakh workers. Today hardly 10,000 workers have employment in the industry due to the faulty tax system. He said the Manmohan Singh government had implemented a very simple tax system and the industry was booming.
On price rise, Gandhi said when the cooking gas price was Rs 400, Modi used to complain but today he was silent when the gas price crossed Rs 1000 mark.
Spriralling prices of essential things, fuel prices and unemployment have made the life miserable but the Prime Minister was helping his close businessmen friends.
Taking a mild view on the unemployment problem in Kerala, Gandhi sought to advise Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to find out where his government has faulted in creating more jobs to the educated youths who are migrating to other countries in large numbers.
During his 30 minute speech, Rahul Gandhi said besides demonetisation and a flawed GST, the COVID-19 lockdown also adversely affected small businesses, labourers, farmers and other sections of the society except for the few billionaires in the country who benefitted from it.
"Mr Modi"s job was to clear the way for big businesses. He did it by dividing the country and its people, by spreading hatred, anger and violence, so that people were distracted from what was actually happening," he said.
Paying tributes to former Chief Minister K Karunakaran, a strong leader of Thrissur,Mr Gandhi said he had a vision and was able to run the Congress government smoothly.
The Congress' Bharat Jodo Yatra will cover a distance of 3,570 km in 150 days. It started from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 7 and will conclude in Jammu and Kashmir.
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