A post is being shared on social media, which contains a video of Rahul Gandhi saying, ‘like how petrol is filled into a tractor or a truck to switch on the Engine, we are filling petrol in the Indian Economy…. .‘ Hindi text on the post translates to ‘After measuring Aata (wheat flour) in litres, now Rahul Gandhi (refers to him a Pappu) has come up with new technology.’ Let’s fact-check this video in this article.
Claim: Rahul Gandhi says like how petrol is filled into a tractor or a truck to switch on the Engine, we are filling petrol in the Indian Economy.
Fact: The viral post contains a small portion of Rahul Gandhi’s speech from April 2020, made during a public meeting in Chhattisgarh. In the full video, Rahul explains the benefits of the Congress party’s NYAY scheme. He says, ‘NYAY Yojana is a way to jumpstart the Indian Economy; like how petrol is filled into a tractor or truck to start the Engine; we are filling petrol in the Indian Economy; once the petrol goes inside, we will switch it on, the Engine starts at once.’ The post just uses the portion where he talks about filling fuel into the Indian economy to mock about his analogy. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We ran a reverse image search with a few screenshots from the viral video and found a video of Rahul Gandhi’s speech on the official Twitter handle of the Congress party. In his address during a public meeting in Chhattisgarh, Rahul Gandhi spoke about the Indian economy and how NYAY Yojana will help jumpstart it. The viral video uses a cropped version of this video from 11:59 where he says, ‘like how petrol is filled into a tractor or truck to start the Engine; we are filling petrol in the Indian Economy; once the petrol goes inside, we will switch it on, and the Engine starts at once.’
The same speech is also on YouTube, which you can watch here. News reports related to this meeting can be here, here.
In the full video, Rahul Gandhi explains that people (poor and farmers) stopped purchasing goods like shirts, pants and shoes once Narendra Modi took money from their pockets (earlier in the speech, he spoke about Demonetisation and GST.) This led to factories in India halting the production of goods and eventually laying off the factory workers. He went onto say that the Indian youth became unemployed, and unemployment has risen very quickly. He further elaborates that NYAY Yojana will credit a yearly amount of Rs.72,000 to the bank accounts of the poor people of India. This will empower them to purchase various goods, and eventually, factories will start producing them and provide employment to the youth of this country
In his words, ‘ NYAY Yojana is not just (crediting) money in the accounts of the poor, it is a way to jumpstart the Indian Economy. Like how petrol is filled into a tractor or truck to start the Engine, we are filling petrol in the Indian Economy; once the petrol goes inside, we will switch it on, and the Engine starts at once. Lakhs of Indian (Chhattisghari) Youth will get jobs.’ Clearly, the video in the viral post has been cleverly edited to leave out the context of his speech mock him about the analogy.
To sum up, an old video of Rahul Gandhi explaining the benefits of the NYAY scheme with a tractor analogy is shared with misleading claims.
