Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi shed light on why he took out the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra and his aspiration at a personal level related to the foot march. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington DC, US, the Congress leader said that they were "forced politically" to take out the Yatra because "instruments of democracy were not working.
"We were forced politically to take out the Yatra because all the instruments that normally work in a democracy, they just were not working....nothing was working so we said, okay, let's go direct," said the Congress MP.
"We went and it worked...It worked beautifully," he remarked.
However, Gandhi said that at the individual level, he always wanted to take out a march across the country.
"...as an individual, at the private level, I always wanted to do it. I always wanted to do it since I was young. I always had this idea that I must, at some point in my life, walk across my country and see what it's about...," Gandhi said during the interaction.
Speaking about what ensued in the Yatra, Gandhi said he tried to become the voice of "as many people as I could."
"So for that, you have to go and understand what's going on. You have to go deeper, deep into the agricultural world, the conflicts that are taking place there, into the financial system, into the tax system," he said.
"You have to, in a sense, go deep into it, talk to people and then understand deeply what they're saying and then transmit it and at a broader level, provide a vision," he added.