The original East India Company wound up over 150 years ago but the raw fear it then generated is back with a new breed of monopolists having taken its place, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday.
He, however, asserted that a "new deal for progressive Indian business is an idea whose time has come".
In an opinion piece in The Indian Express, Gandhi said India was silenced by the East India Company and it was silenced not by its business prowess, but by its chokehold.
The Company choked India by partnering with, bribing, and threatening more pliant maharajas and nawabs, he pointed out.
"It controlled our banking, bureaucratic, and information networks. We didn't lose our freedom to another nation; we lost it to a monopolistic corporation that ran a coercive apparatus," he said.
The original East India Company wound up over 150 years ago, but the raw fear it then generated is back, he claimed.
A new breed of monopolists has taken its place, amassing colossal wealth, even as India has become far more unequal and unfair for everybody else, Gandhi said.
"Our institutions no longer belong to our people, they do the bidding of monopolists. Lakhs of businesses have been decimated and India is unable to generate jobs for her youth," the former Congress president said.
Sharing the article on X, Gandhi said, "Choose your India: Play-Fair or Monopoly? Jobs or Oligarchies? Competence or Connections? Innovation or Intimidation? Wealth for many or the few?"
"I write on why a New Deal for Business isn't just an option. It is India's future," he said, sharing his opinion piece.
Asserting that 'Bharat Mata' is mother to all her children, Gandhi in his article said the monopolisation of her resources and power, this blatant denial of the many for the sake of a chosen few, has wounded her.
"I know that hundreds of India's brilliant and dynamic business leaders are scared of the monopolists. Are you one of them? Scared to talk on the phone? Scared of the monopolists colluding with the state to enter your sector and crush you? Scared of I-T, CBI or ED raids forcing you to sell your business to them? Scared of them starving you of capital when you need it the most? Scared of them changing the rules of the game midway to ambush you?" he said.
Gandhi said that describing these oligarchic groups as businesses is misleading as when one competes with them, one is not competing with a company, but one is fighting the machinery of the Indian state.
"Their core competence is not products, consumers or ideas, it is their ability to control India's governing institutions and regulators and, in surveillance. Unlike you, these groups decide what Indians read and watch, they influence how Indians think and what they speak," Gandhi said.
Today, market forces do not determine success, power relations do, he said
"There is fear in your hearts. But there is also hope. In contrast to the 'match-fixing' monopoly groups, there is a larger number of amazing 'play-fair' Indian businesses, from micro-enterprises to large corporations, but you are silent. You persevere in an oppressive system," the Congress leader said.
Gandhi cited the example of Peyush Bansal, a first-generation entrepreneur with no political contacts, who started a business when he was just 22. Bansal went on to co-found Lenskart in 2010, which reshaped the eyewear sector, Gandhi noted and added that today, Lenskart provides employment to thousands across India.
"Then take Faqir Chand Kohli who, as a manager, built Tata Consultancy in the 1970s. It was a triumph of ambition over fear, the guts to take on giants like IBM and Accenture in their backyard. TCS and other pioneers transformed global IT services from a boutique process to an industrial process. I have never personally known Bansal or the late FC Kohli. It could well be that their political preferences diverge/diverged from mine.So what?" he said.
"It seems that companies like Tynor, InMobi, Manyavar, Zomato, Fractal Analytics, Araku Coffee, Tredence, Amagi, iD Fresh Food, PhonePe, Moglix, Sula Vineyards, Juspay, Zerodha, Veritas, Oxyzo, Avendus, from the younger lot, and L&T, Haldiram, Aravind Eye Hospital, Indigo, Asian Paints, HDFC group, Bajaj Auto and Bajaj Finance, Cipla, Mahindra Auto, Titan, from the older lot - most I hardly know personally - are a tiny sample of homegrown companies that have innovated and chosen to play by the rules," he said.
Gandhi said he was sure that he would have left out hundreds of names which fit the bill even better.
"My politics has always been about protecting the weak and voiceless. I draw my inspiration from Gandhi ji's words about defending the last voiceless person in the 'line'. This conviction made me support MGNREGA, the Right to Food and the Land Acquisition Bill. I stood with the Adivasis in the famous confrontation of Niyamgiri. I backed our farmers in their struggle against the three black farm laws. I listened to the pain of the people of Manipur," he said in the op-ed.
"But I realised I had missed the full depth of Gandhiji's words. I failed to pick up that 'line' is a metaphor that, in fact, there are many different 'lines' in society. In the 'line' you stand in, that of business, it is you who are the exploited, the disadvantaged," he said.
Gandhi said his politics will aim to provide such business people with what they have been denied fairness and freedom to operate.
The government cannot be allowed to support one business at the expense of all others, much less support benami equations in the business system, he asserted.
Government agencies are not weapons to be used to attack and intimidate businesses, the Congress leader said.
"That said, I do not believe that fear should be transferred from you to these big monopolists. They are not evil individuals, but simply the outcome of the deficiencies of our societal and political environment. They should get space, and so should you. This country is for all of us," Gandhi said.
