Rahul Gandhi’s churlish attacks on PM, US deal diminish LoP

(The article was originally published in Indian Express on February 14, 2026 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)

The Opposition has every right to question the Government on its actions. Indo-US Trade Deal, concluded last week following a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump, is no exception. But the opposition, rather than engaging with the government on the trade deal, appears more interested in stalling the parliament and making wild allegations against the leader of the government. The government, on its part, repeatedly clarified both inside and outside the parliament, with trade minister himself going before the media, that those allegations were not based on facts.

The last time that a bilateral agreement generated so much heat and dust was two decades ago during the regime of UPA 1. When the Manmohan Singh-led government sought to push through the Indo-US Nuclear Deal after 2005, there were heated debates in the parliament. It took three full years to finally see the deal through in October 2008. During those animated debates, it was not just the principal opposition party, the BJP, that was raising serious concerns about certain clauses, but even the Left parties, which were supporting the government, too took strong objection to the deal and finally withdrew support to the government forcing Manmohan Singh to seek a confidence vote in the parliament.

Those debates on the Indo-US nuclear deal were a treat for discerning viewers. They were focused and constructive debates, both inside and outside the parliament, that saw not only the lawmakers like L K Advani, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie from NDA and Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechuri and Gurudas Dasgupta from the Left parties, but even eminent nuclear scientists like A N Prasad and P K Iyengar too stepping in, raising pointed concerns over issues like 1-2-3 Agreement, Hyde Act, and possible constraints on future nuclear tests.

Unfortunately, we no longer come across such mature debates in the parliament anymore. The opposition decided this time to be more cacophonous than constructive. Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi resorted to sordid personal attacks and mean insinuations against the government rather than raising any substantial objections to the deal. Inside the parliament, he accused the government of selling India. “Are you not ashamed of selling India? You have sold our mother, Bharat Mata”, he theatrically harangued. His comments outside too were preposterous. The Gandhi scion sought to raise extraneous issues like Epstein files, Ambani and Adani and insinuated that Modi was “under pressure”, “compromised”, and “surrendered”. He sounded amateurish when he bombastically claimed in the parliament that “they are choking him… when you choke, you see fear in the eyes. You can see it in PM’s eyes”. He came out even more boorish when he told reporters outside the parliament that “I know the reason, and Modi knows. Modi’s image balloon could burst”.

Many experts tried to remind the opposition that the trade deal between India and the US was happening under extraordinary global circumstances. All such bilateral agreements in the past were arrived at under the protective umbrella of multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Unfortunately, we entered a chaotic and disorderly world today and President Trump is not only the instigator-in-chief but also the exploiter of that disorder. While country after country surrendered to his whimsical demands, India stood its ground for almost a year and concluded the deal on mutually satisfactory terms. In the end, eminent economists like Jeffrey Sachs called it as the backing down of the US. Sachs averred that the US “should not tell India with whom to trade” and praised the Prime Minister saying “Modi did a good job. He kept calm and handled the situation wisely”.

No deal can be one-sided. But the available details clearly suggest that India got the best deal in the given circumstances. Contrary to the propaganda by the opposition, agriculture sector has been zealously safeguarded by our negotiators not only in the US deal but even in the earlier ones with Australia, European Union and New Zealand. All major agricultural products like pulses, grains, cereals, millets and vegetables, dairy products like milk and cheese, animal products like poultry and meat, and other items like oilseeds, groundnuts, honey, non-alcoholic beverages and essential oils have been fully protected from import tariff exemptions. If India’s agreement to reduce tariffs on certain animal feeds like dried distillers’ grains is seen as negatively impacting animal feed industry, it should also be seen as positively benefitting poultry and other animal rearing farmers.

The opposition seems to have misconstrued the delay in clinching the deal to US pressure and interpreted the final clincher after a phone call between the leaders as a surrender. Both assumptions were wrong. Major part of the deal was finalised by officials of the Indian Commerce Ministry and the US Department of Commerce several months ago. What delayed closure of the agreement was President Trump’s attempts at mixing up trade with geo-politics and invoking Indo-Pak conflict repeatedly. India categorically conveyed to the US counterparts that as long as such a mix up continues, it cannot seal the deal. It was only after that episode had ended that the two leaders spoke, and the deal was announced immediately. In the end, India’s refusal to link trade with geopolitics and Nobel prize worked, whereas the US’ efforts to browbeat India didn’t.

It is clear that Rahul Gandhi wanted to use the debate over the trade deal to besmirch Prime Minister’s image. But the comic reality is that when the ruling party members ridiculed Rahul as imbecile or less ingenious, the jibes stuck, whereas when he tried to use words like ‘coward’, ‘vote chor’, ‘compromised’ and ‘surrendered’ for the Prime Minister, nobody took him seriously. Far from denting Prime Minister’s image, the episode once again highlighted the irresponsible and unbecoming of behaviour of the Leader of the Opposition.