How will development run with the engine of hatred?
Pankaj Srivastava April 8,2025
Union Minister Piyush Goyal’s statement at the Start-up Mahakumbh has created a ruckus. Many entrepreneurs have been forced to openly criticize the government. Among them are such stars of the industry who used to praise the Modi government on every issue till yesterday. It seems that the government is cornered on this issue. The biggest thing is that Piyush Goyal’s statement contains an admission of lagging behind China, which the Modi government has always been hiding its face from. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi had said the same thing in the Lok Sabha during the budget session, on which the BJP had even called him pro-China.
On April 5, in Delhi, Union Minister of Industry and Commerce Piyush Goyal, while giving the closing speech at the Start-up Mahakumbh, said something that entrepreneurs are not able to tolerate. He said, “Our focus is more on food delivery apps. We are turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so that rich people can get food without leaving their homes. …People are selling fancy ice cream and cookies. They call themselves startups by putting words like healthy ice cream, ‘zero gluten free’ and ‘vegan’ in nice packaging. This is not a startup. This is a business.”
Not only this, he publicly admitted to lagging behind China. He said, “China’s startups are working on developing electric mobility and battery technology. Due to which today China is far ahead in the electric mobility ecosystem sector. There is growth in semiconductors. China’s own artificial intelligence is being created. They are investing heavily to become self-reliant. They are developing chips and AI models. Which will prepare the country for the future.”
It is not usually that a BJP leader narrates this story of China’s progress. But the surprising thing is that the Union Minister is putting all the responsibility on start-up companies, whereas the government is responsible for making policies from investment to making the path easier for entrepreneurs. The opposition was bound to attack this statement, but surprisingly the industry has openly objected on this front. This objection is in such a language that no one expected.
Ashneer Grover, founder of BharatPe, said,
“China also initially made food delivery apps, later they moved towards AI tech. It is good to be inspired by what China has done. Politicians should also aspire to grow at more than 10% economic rate for the next 20 years before criticizing those who create jobs for people.”
There, Zepto CEO Adit Parcha said,
“It is easy to criticize consumer start-ups in India. Especially when you are comparing them with China and America. If we talk about Zepto, today about 1.5 lakh people are earning livelihood in India through it. A company which came into existence only three and a half years ago. Is paying more than thousand crore rupees tax to the government every year.”
Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai has been considered a big fan of the Modi government. But on this issue, he also sharply criticized Piyush Goyal.
He said,
‘Piyush Goyal should tell what he did as a minister to increase deep tech start-ups in India? There are many small deep tech start-ups in India in chip design, IoT, robotics, EV charging, BMS, which are growing rapidly, but where is the capital? Indian start-ups got $160 billion between 2014 and 2024 while China got $845 billion.’
These statements of entrepreneurs are exposing the advertisements that call the Modi government industry friendly. By the way, no one accused Piyush Goyal of demeaning India as was done with Rahul Gandhi. In the budget session, Rahul had then warned the government about lagging behind China. He had said,
“Accept the truth. We are fighting China on the strength of Chinese motors, Chinese batteries. India has lagged behind in AI.”
BJP had reacted sharply to this statement. MP and party’s national spokesperson Sabit Patra had said,
“I want to address him as ‘Rahul Jinping’. He took the name of China 34 times. He must be praying to be a Chinese in his next life.”
That is, BJP was questioning Rahul’s loyalty towards India. But now Piyush Goyal is also saying the same thing that Rahul had said. Obviously, Congress has got an opportunity to attack. The party has said-
“Piyush Goyal himself is exposing the Modi government on start-ups. He is saying that India is only making food delivery apps in the name of start-ups, in which unemployed people are working to deliver food to the rich on low wages.”
The Start-up India campaign was launched in 2016. At that time, there were five hundred recognized start-ups in the country. By January 15, 2025, their total number has increased to 1,59,157. By April 2025, the total number of unicorn start-ups in India is 118, while the number of unicorns in China is 409. Unicorns are those private start-ups whose valuation is more than one billion dollars.
The state of science and research is such that recently, Lakshmidhar Behera, director of Mandi-based IIT in Himachal Pradesh, said that the reason for the earthquake in Himachal is non-vegetarianism and recently, V. Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, was in the news for justifying the remedy of reducing fever by drinking cow urine. The situation is such that it has become difficult to even raise questions on the pollution of Gangajal. Recently, during the Maha Kumbh held in Prayagraj, the National Green Tribunal had said that Gangajal is not fit for drinking, let alone bathing. There was a sharp reaction to this. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said in the assembly that the ones who see the filth in Kumbh are pigs and vultures.
Violence and abuse in the processions taken out in many states on the last Ram Navami made headlines around the world, while China is in the news because of its AI reasoning model DeepSeek. A Chinese start-up did this feat in January 2025 by spending only 6 million dollars, while Open AI, Google and Microsoft created their AI models by spending billions of dollars.
It is clear that without strengthening the base of knowledge and science, the field of research cannot be accelerated, which is being constantly bombarded in India. The limit is that recently NCERT also tried to remove Darwin’s theory of evolution from class ten books.
