London: Speaking to MBA students at Cambridge Judge Business School on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi said people around the world need to find a way to listen empathetically to new concerns in the 21st century . century that changed as production shifted away from democratic countries and towards China. The “art of listening” when practiced consistently and diligently, he said, is “very powerful”.
He said manufacturing has declined in recent decades in democracies, including India and the US, as production shifted to China, which has created massive inequality and anger that needs urgent attention and dialogue.
He told the MBA students, “We cannot afford a planet that does not produce undemocratic systems.”
“So we need fresh thinking about how do you produce in a democratic environment versus a coercive one”, and “a conversation about this”.
Rahul was introduced to the MBA audience by Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Strategy and Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School, who said the speaker came from a “long lineage of global leaders”.
Gandhi’s speech was divided into three parts, beginning with an outline of the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, which he plans to undertake in 14 Indian states from September 2022 to January 2023 to draw attention to “prejudice, unemployment and rising inequality”. Traveled 4,081 kilometers on foot. in India”.
The second part of the lecture focused on the “two different approaches” of the US and China to World War II and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The former congressman said that in addition to eliminating manufacturing jobs, the US had become less open after September 11, 2001, while China “idolizes harmony” through organization around the Chinese Communist Party.
The final aspect of his lecture centered around the theme of “the imperative for a global conversation”, in which he tied the themes together in a call for a new kind of receptivity to different perspectives – explaining whether a ‘travel’ is a journey or pilgrimages in which people “shut themselves off so that they may listen to others”.