Karungapplly (Kerala), Sep 16: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday questioned why India has a high rate of unemployment when the second richest man in the world is an Indian, on a day when Gautam Adani became the world’s second richest person briefly.

Addressing a public meeting here during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress leader said, “The second richest man in the world is an Indian. You must have read in the newspapers that an Indian person now is the second richest man in the world.”

“He is a close associate of the leader of this country. He controls most of the businesses in the country- airports, ports, power plants, agriculture, and roads. I want to ask you a simple question if India has the second richest man in the world, why does that same country have the highest unemployment in the world?” asked Rahul Gandhi.

“Why is it, that there are a few people, who are the wealthiest in the world and then there are millions and millions and millions of people, who are jobless? Do not think that these two things are not connected. They are connected,” he said.

“The reason that millions of people don’t have a job is that the government is interested in only protecting and supporting the richest five or six business people in this country,” he said.

Billionaire Gautam Adani today become the world’s second richest person, according to Forbes Real-time Billionaires List, but lost the status quickly amid the market crash on Dalal Street.

The former Congress President also thanked people for participating in the march, and said,

“Lakhs of people walked with us, children, adults, senior citizens, men, women, lakhs of people today gave us support… So I thank all the people of Kerala who have supported this yatra as if it is their own yatra”.

He said many are joining the walk because “They can see the hatred that is being spread by the BJP and the RSS”.

“They can see how the BJP-RSS makes one brother fight against another brother to come to power, divides people along religious lines, along community lines, along language lines, treats males and females completely differently, they can see all this,” he said.

The Congress leader alleged that for the RSS, the women of India are “second class citizens”. “They do not have the right to express themselves. They have a role that the RSS believes they can define. The people of Kerala and people of India understand that this is harming the nation,” he said.

“And that is why; millions of people are joining this yatra to say to the BJP, to the RSS that we will not allow you to divide this country. We will not allow you to weaken this country and that is why ‘Bharat Jodo’,” he said.

He added that a lot of the thought behind Bharat Jodo comes from the great leaders of Kerala. “This is not a new idea. This is not a 21st-century idea, this idea was spoken about by Shri Narayana Guru Ji, Chattampi Swami Ji, and Mahatma Ayyankali Ji. They all believed in the idea of Bharat Jodo.”

He also the high rate of unemployment was a result of the hatred being spread.

” I have been walking the streets, now of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Whenever a youngster comes to me, I ask them what they do- half of them say, they do nothing and the other half say- they are not happy with what they are doing,” he said.

“All public sector companies, one by one by one, are being divested, privatised. Millions of people are going to loose their jobs as these companies are privatised. Who are these companies going to go to? They are going to go to the same 5 or 6 business people, who everything else goes to,” he said.

The Yatra was launched at Kanyakumari on September 7, and the foot march started on the morning of September 8.

The Yatra will cover a distance of 3500 kilometers, crossing 12 states and two union territories, over a period of around five months. (UNI)