Explained : Indo-US trade deal handed over India’s data, hurt farmers: Rahul Gandhi and Its Impact

New Delhi: Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged in the Lok Sabha that the Indo-US trade deal was a “wholesale surrender” and a “tragedy” and claimed that the PM has failed to leverage India’s critical assets such as data, human resources, food production and energy. However, Gandhi didn’t mention the unpublished book of former Army chief Manoj Naravane during his nearly 45-minute speech in the House.

Gandhi opened his speech with a short narration about his understanding of martial art ‘Jiu-Jitsu’ and how ‘grip’, ‘choke’ and ‘tap’, crucial in martial arts, was evident in the politics of the trade deal with the US and accused the Prime Minister of giving into the pressure. “This is a wholesale surrender. It is a tragedy… He has surrendered the future because he wants to protect the BJP’s financial architecture, on which there is a case in the United States,” he said.

Gandhi accused the Modi government of failing to leverage India’s vital assets, both in trade deal negotiations and in the budget and claimed that the government had “buckled” under the pressure of (punitive) tariffs by the US. “We have handed out our data, given up control over digital trade rules, no data localisation, free data flow to the USA, a limit on digital tax and no source code disclosure. A 20-year free tax holiday to anybody who wants it, to the big tax company. This is what you’ve done on data,” he said.

“Our farmers have been left to the mercy of mechanised massive American farms. Our textiles have been wiped out. Bangladesh is now going to wipe out our textile industry, our energy security has been handed over, we can’t buy oil from whom we want to… It is a tragedy…” he further added. Gandhi said that an INDIA bloc government would have negotiated with the US effectively.

“We (INDIA bloc) would have told President Trump that if you want access to Indian data, you will have to talk to us as an equal. We would not be made equal to Pakistan. We would tell Trump our energy security is our energy security and we will protect it. We would have told Trump we will protect our farmers,” the LoP said.

He said that while the economic survey pointed to how we are living in a world of intensifying geopolitical conflict and how the dominance of the US and dollar were being challenged by other big nations and how we are moving from a world of one superpower to a new world order that we can’t predict, the budget failed to spell out a vision on those issues.
Many of Gandhi’s contentious comments were later expunged from the records. Gandhi also dragged Union minister Hardeep Puri and a businessman into a recent row in the US. “There is a businessman… I want to ask why he is not in jail?… I would also like to ask Hardeep Puri, who introduced him to … I know who introduced him, and Puri knows who introduced him…” he said.