New Delhi, Feb. 6 -- Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the world is shifting to a new energy system, where electric motors, batteries, and optics will be the most crucial technologies, yet India "remains stuck in outdated economic thinking, controlled by monopolies like Reliance and Adani".
The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha said when power is no longer concentrated in a few hands, whether in business or Government, it transforms everything.
Gandhi made the remarks in a post accompanying a video on his YouTube channel on his recent interaction with students from Nagaland.
"Spoke with students from Nagaland recently and realized how little we are taught about their culture - that's not education, that's erasure. The Northeast should be far more central to India's vision and development," he said.
Gandhi said the real conversation during the interaction, though, was about the future.
"The world is shifting to a new energy system, where electric motors, batteries, and optics will be the most crucial technologies. Yet India remains stuck in outdated economic thinking, controlled by monopolies like Reliance and Adani. Our policies still favour fossil fuels, while China and the US race ahead in EVs, AI, and battery tech," the Congress leader said.
"This isn't just an economic shift -- it's a power shift. Take cars, for example. Traditional engines are centralized power sources, but in EVs, power is decentralized -- batteries and motors reshape the entire design. The same is happening across energy and industry," Gandhi said.
When power is no longer concentrated in a few hands, whether in business or government, it transforms everything -- our economy, politics, even the nature of war, he said.
"We need to bring these conversations to universities, to young minds - because we're on the brink of a paradigm shift. If we don't adapt, we won't just fall behind in industry - we'll lose control over our own future. The first step to shaping it is understanding it," he said.
In the video, Gandhi is told by the students that they experience racism due to their looks and the Congress leader tells them that it is the result of ignorance.
When students ask him about his recent address in the Lok Sabha in which he talked about the shift to an electric motor, Gandhi demonstrates how an EV car is different from the petrol/diesel one and asserts that it is about decentralising the power.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.