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Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the U.S., in third week of June, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will address a public rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on June 4. The public rally will cap his week-long tour of the U.S., that includes a talk at the Stanford University.

According to sources, what set plans in motion was an invitation from Stanford professors Larry Diamond and Francis Fukhyama for a lecture and talk at the university which is scheduled for May 31.

This will be first public rally by Mr. Gandhi in the U.S. In September 2014, just months after he was elected for the first time, Prime Minister Modi had addressed a public meeting at the same venue. Congress leaders claim that it is only a coincidence that the rally comes ahead of Mr. Modi’s first ever state visit to the U.S., after taking over as Prime Minister.

Mr. Gandhi is also scheduled to hold interactions with the Indian American community, industry representatives and the student community. He will also address a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

“Mr. Gandhi was headed to U.S. for the talk at Stanford but once the word got out about the event, many other organisations and think tanks approached seeking time. People want to hear about his experiences during Bharat Jodo Yatra, which in many ways was a unique event in contemporary politics. They also want to talk to him about the reasons for his disqualification, which again is unprecedented in a democratic country,” a senior Congress leader said.

Mr. Gandhi will also be meeting Hollywood fraternity, especially those of Indian origin. He has invitations from several media groups to participate in chat shows but so far, as per sources, nothing has been finalised.

As Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressed at the swearing-in event of the new Karnataka government on Saturday, he said the Congress won in Karnataka for only one reason and that is the party’s decision to stand by the poor, the weak, the backward and the Dalit. “A lot has been written in the media analysing why the Congress won this election. There are many analyses and theories. But there is only one reason. The Congress fought for the cause of the poor, the Weak, the backward and the Dalit people. We only had truth and the strength of the poor people. On the other hand, the BJP had the rich, the police and money. But Karnataka’s people defeated all these and their corruption and hatred,” Rahul Gandhi said.

Congratulating the people of Karnataka, Rahul Gandhi said he is aware of the distress that the people suffered in the last five years. “Like we said during the Bharat Jodo Yatra that love will bloom in Karnataka ending, it has happened now,” Rahul Gandhi said.

As Siddaramaiah took the oath as the chief minister and DK Shivakumat as the deputy chief minister, Rahul Gandhi recounted the five promises given by the party before the election. “I told you we don’t make false promises. The first Cabinet meeting will take place in an hour or two. All these five promises will be passed. We walk the talk. The government is committed to the welfare of the middle-class. We will give you a clean, corruption-free government,” Rahul Gandhi said.

The swearing-in ceremony presented a picture of opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election as NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, Kamal Haasan, Bihar deputy chief minisyet Tejashwi Yadav, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury were present. As Rahul Gandhi began his speech, he mentioned all the opposition leaders present at the ceremony sending a message of opposition unity. The AAP, however, was not invited and so were K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRC and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD.

Sam Pitroda, the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC) chairman, says development is about ideas at the right time. “Sometimes, people who plant the seeds don’t get to see the fruits,” he says. The technocrat-policy maker who steered India’s big shift to seeds don’t get to see the fruits,” he says. The technocrat-policy maker who steered India’s big shift to telecommunications and technology in the 1980s, says modern India and its success stories including Bengaluru were visualized by far-sighted leaders from another time.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/election/karnataka/this-election-is-about-the-idea-of-india-sam-pitroda-1214774.html

Indian Overseas Congress USA is organizing Equality Unity and Peace Walk, with the inspiration from Bharat Jodo Yathra.

For more details, please visit the event flyer.

The Congress has launched a platform to recruit people from across the country irrespective of age, gender, class, creed or caste. The nationwide campaign aims to recruit five lakh “social media warriors” to challenge the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the digital space. The Party recognises that it is time for like-minded individuals in the country to come together and defend the idea of India. As a society, we must step up, unite and fight for our democratic, secular and just Republic of India. This huge recruitment drive will encompass appointments in all stages – from the state to the national level.

On the new social media recruitment drive, Congress leader Shri Rahul Gandhi strongly encouraged the youth of India to join the Congress party’s “army of truth” to fight the trolls paid by the ruling party on digital platforms. In a video message on Twitter, Rahul Gandhi said, “The backbone of the attack on this nation is a troll army, thousands of people who spread hatred, anger and are paid to do so.” He added that the paid troll army is spreading hatred and anger in India and the time has come to counter that. “As a young person, you could see what is going on… In your schools, universities and colleges you can see the oppression. You can see the attack on the idea of India. Look outside Delhi, you can see what is happening to the farmers. The backbone of this war on the nation is a troll army… We also need warriors to defend liberal values, to defend the ideas of compassion, peace, harmony and affection,” Rahul Gandhi said.

“This is an army of truth. This is an army that will defend the idea of India. We are building this platform for you. To give you tools to fight this battle and win,” he further explained.

Handles of the Congress Social Media have been one of the loudest voices against the tyrannical rule of the Modi regime. It has raised the people’s voice on various issues – farmers, migrant workers, women’s safety, student’s education, the dismal state of our economy and the rising unemployment, our Armed Forces and more. Handles have countered the Modi government’s lies and hateful propaganda and have shown the public the truth.

The Congress seeks to build on this trajectory and continue this work by inviting more people to join in this mission to save India from hate and lies. This recruitment drive will take place in every state of the country and is open to anyone who wants to be a part of this mission. One can join through the website – (www.incsmw.in) or (www.incsmwarriors.com), call on the toll-free number 1800 1200 00044 or by WhatsApp on 7574000525.

One morning, I received a call from Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi: he wanted me to meet with the president of Vietnam, who was then on a visit to Delhi. That same afternoon, I spent an hour with him discussing telecom, technology missions and India’s software industry.

After carefully listening to me through a translator, he told me that he would be sending General Giap to spend some time with me in Delhi. While studying in America during the Vietnam War, I had often heard of General Giap: he was one of those rare generals who, in Vietnam, had fought against both the French and later against the Americans. He was the most prominent military commander during the Vietnam War, other than Ho Chi Minh, and was responsible for leadership and operations until the war ended. He died in October 2013 at the age of 102.

In Delhi, General Giap and I spent a full day at C-DOT, talking about our indigenous design and manufacturing efforts, the role of information technology, and the technology benefits for the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. He listened carefully, took notes, asked questions and was keen to learn from the Indian experience. After his visit, C-DOT started exporting rural exchanges to Vietnam to improve their village communication. Similarly, I hosted General Electric (GE) chairman Jack Welch during his first-ever official visit to India and convinced him to buy Indian software talent. He was generous enough to send a team of GE experts that ultimately resulted in our first $10 million order for software services. This marketing approach resulted in orders from IBM, Texas Instruments, Motorola and others to kick-start the Indian software export business. Rajiv Gandhi and I also convinced Gorbachev at the prime minister’s house in Delhi to buy Indian consumer goods, computer hardware and software.

We worked with the Soviet Union to establish a massive Indian science and technology exhibition in Moscow, Leningrad and Tashkent. On the one hand, we promoted our technology, and on the other, we resisted offers from multinationals like Siemens, GEC and Ericsson to import equipment to build the Indian network. I opposed large loans from the World Bank for telecom equipment import. On one occasion, the president of the World Bank visited Delhi to have lunch with us and persuade us to reconsider. It was clear that we would avail of loans only to buy what we need, not for what the Bank wanted to sell. In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections, and the new government in power got after me with a sense of revenge, raising allegations, abuses, threats and false corruption charges. They knew well that I took only a 1-rupee salary (then just 10 cents in the US) per year for almost ten years.

In the process, I had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass at a hospital in Delhi. Young C-DOT associates, the Indian public and the media came to my rescue and convinced the government to change the minister who was after me and set things right. After that, the government announced a new national election. I worked closely with Rajiv Gandhi as part of his team to help ensure victory. On 21 May 1991, at 10 p.m., I received a call from a friend informing me that Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated by a suicide bomber during his campaign visit in southern India. I was shocked and shaken. All my dreams for India disappeared in a moment. The news broke my heart. I strongly felt that India would take a long time to recover from this loss. I had spent all the money I had had managing my family in India and the US. I was broke. I had two children ready to go to college.

Finally, I decided to come back to the US to start earning again. Unfortunately, before taking my assignment with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, I had given up my US nationality in 1987. I came back to the US on a tourist visa, but I was not allowed to work. Fortunately, I owned a US patent issued in 1975 for the I-electronic diary. I realized that several multinational corporations (MNCs) were manufacturing and marketing my invention. I filed a case in the Cook County court against Casio, Toshiba, Sharp, HP, Texas Instruments and RadioShack and settled for a hefty cash amount, which enabled me to restart my life. It was strange that I had to use a tourist visa to come back to my own country. I have always felt that I belong to at least two countries—my birthplace, India, that gave me my roots, and my adopted nation, the US, which gave me my tools and my understanding of technology. I am equally committed to both countries. I do not have to choose sides. I can be in both countries at the same time. I admire the good and reject the bad in each of them. Both are democratic countries with freedom, flexibility, diversity and loving people. After a while, I applied for a green card in the US and focused on building an electronic manufacturing company in Wisconsin. However, that did not challenge me enough. I wanted to do something for the telecom industry in emerging markets and use my Indian experience to benefit Asia, Africa and Latin America. That vision led me to Worldtel in London. In 1995, nearly four out of every five people in the world lacked the most basic telephone services. To help privatize telecom and get the needed investments in emerging markets, the International Telecom Union (ITU), a part of the UN organization, decided to launch Worldtel. This organization functioned as an investment bank/fund to develop and support privately funded telecom projects in nations where the need was most urgent. ‘Worldtel’s mission was to break the vicious circle that exists in developing countries,’ the ITU launch announcement stated.

Sound telecommunication capacity and capability were needed to stimulate economic growth. However, dysfunctional telecommunications deterred private investment. This was a Catch-22 situation that we hoped to cut through by Worldtel’s initiative. I was named Worldtel’s chairman in 1995. I thought we had the potential to make a significant impact on communications in the Third World. The objective of Worldtel was to focus exclusively on telecommunications and information technology, and provide direct equity investment raised from private financial investors for implementing projects that would improve telecom infrastructure in developing countries. In the process, Worldtel improved operating skills and provided management support to help enhance productivity and efficiency. Worldtel investors were AIG, GE, Intel, NatWest and others.

I went to China for the first time after President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1981, as part of a delegation of around twenty telecom experts. I spent two weeks meeting telecom experts in Beijing, Nanking and Shanghai. We also went to tourist attractions, including the Great Wall. In those days, all we could see were bicycles, Chairman Mao’s uniform, empty roads and people staring at white foreigners. Telecom was mainly electromechanical and hardly available. After that, I worked with local government organizations to explore Tianjin’s digital switching operations: however, this never materialized. Now China is, of course, a different country altogether. While working at Worldtel, I founded a US company in 1998 to design and develop a mobile wallet. Those were the early days of the mobile wallet concept. I applied for close to fifty patents on this idea and set up design and business development teams in Chicago, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Baroda, Pune and Vienna. Later in 2013, I sold the company to Mastercard. When I was working on the mobile wallet company, I found I had contracted cancer, requiring major surgery.

Five years after that, I would need another quadruple bypass. I was concerned, but I survived the second open-heart surgery. Three near-death experiences—two quadruple heart bypasses and one from cancer—have moulded my views on what is essential in life and what is not.

Excerpted and published with the permission from Penguin Random House