Mumbai: Hitting out at the ruling BJP-led NDA's policies, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said India is essentially an agrarian economy, but the present government was not doing enough for the farmers.
"We have been a traditional agri-economy, but we have made a smooth transition from agri to IT and knowledge economy now. A few years ago, we had launched National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it was strongly resisted, but now it contributes in a large measure to the nine percent growth as it was injecting cash into rural economy and it built a rural infrastructure," Gandhi pointed out while interacting with B-school students of the prestigious Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) here.
Though Indian farms are now divided and not capable of sustaining families, he said agriculture was not a problem for the farmers, but for the businessmen, industrialists, etc.
"The UPA had strategy of supporting farmers, but the present government has a different focus which is not on farmers or agriculture... They tried to stop NREGA and other UPA policies, but we put pressure on them," he said.
As the Centre's ambitious start-up mission got underway, Rahul Gandhi said there is a contradiction in pushing for start-ups and being "intolerant".
(With IANS inputs)
