Ajit Karn
Rahul Gandhi talks about the “Art of Listening
London: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi delivered a lecture at the prestigious University of Cambridge on the “art of listening” and called for a new way of thinking to promote a democratic rather than coercive global environment.
In reference to the decline in manufacturing in democratic nations such as India and the United States in recent years, as production shifted to China, Rahul Gandhi stated that the shift had produced mass inequality and resentment that required immediate attention and dialogue.
Tuesday evening, the Visiting Fellow of the Cambridge Judge Business School (Cambridge JBS) and member of the opposition delivered a lecture entitled “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century” to students at the university.
The 52-year-old Rahul Gandhi stated, “We simply cannot afford a biosphere that does not produce under democratic systems.”
“Therefore, we need new ways of thinking about how to produce in a democratic versus a coercive environment… negotiation,” he said.
Cambridge JBS reported that Rahul Gandhi’s lecture to MBA students centred on the significance of people finding a way to listen compassionately to new concerns in the 21st century, which has been transformed by the transfer of production away from democratic nations. When consistently and assiduously practised, the “art of listening” is “very potent,” he said.
The lecture was divided into three major sections, beginning with an overview of Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, a 4,000-kilometer trek he led through 12 Indian states between September 2022 and January 2023 to draw attention to “prejudice, unemployment, and rising inequality in India.”
The second component of the lecture focused on the “two divergent perspectives” of the United States and China since World War II, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In addition to the loss of manufacturing employment, according to Rahul Gandhi, the United States has become less open since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. China, he said, “idolises concord” by organising itself around the Chinese Communist Party.
His concluding remarks centred on the theme “Importance of a Global Dialogue” as he called for a new type of openness to differing perspectives.
He also explained to the assemblage of Cambridge University students that a “yatra” is a journey or pilgrimage during which participants “close themselves down in order to listen to others.”
Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and Professor of Strategy & Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School, introduced Rahul Gandhi to the Cambridge MBA students as a member of a “long lineage of global leaders.” Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was also an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, and the Cambridge Judge Chair in Indian Commerce and Enterprise bears his name. His father, the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and he both attended Cambridge University.
Cambridge JBS expressed gratitude to Gandhi for sharing his “experience and insight on global economics and policymaking”
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Rahul Gandhi is on a week-long tour of the United Kingdom and is scheduled to conduct closed-door sessions at Cambridge University on Big Data and Democracy and India-China relations. Later in the week, he will meet with representatives of the UK chapter of the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC) and deliver a speech at a “Indian Diaspora Conference” scheduled for the London weekend.
