New Delhi, Feb 6 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the world is shifting to a new energy system, where electric motors, batteries, and optics will be the most crucial technologies, yet India "remains stuck in outdated economic thinking, controlled by monopolies like Reliance and Adani".

The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha said when power is no longer concentrated in a few hands, whether in business or government, it transforms everything.

Gandhi made the remarks in a post accompanying a video on his YouTube channel on his recent interaction with students from Nagaland.

"Spoke with students from Nagaland recently and realized how little we are taught about their culture - that's not education, that's erasure. The Northeast should be far more central to India's vision and development," he said.

Gandhi said the real conversation during the interaction, though, was about the future.

"The world is shifting to a new energy system, where electric motors, batteries, and optics will be the most crucial technologies. Yet India remains stuck in outdated economic thinking, controlled by monopolies like Reliance and Adani. Our policies still favour fossil fuels, while China and the US race ahead in EVs, AI, and battery tech," the Congress leader said.

"This isn't just an economic shift -- it's a power shift. Take cars, for example. Traditional engines are centralized power sources, but in EVs, power is decentralized -- batteries and motors reshape the entire design. The same is happening across energy and industry," Gandhi said.

When power is no longer concentrated in a few hands, whether in business or government, it transforms everything -- our economy, politics, even the nature of war, he said.

"We need to bring these conversations to universities, to young minds - because we're on the brink of a paradigm shift. If we don't adapt, we won't just fall behind in industry - we'll lose control over our own future. The first step to shaping it is understanding it," he said.

In the video, Gandhi is told by the students that they experience racism due to their looks and the Congress leader tells them that it is the result of ignorance.

When students ask him about his recent address in the Lok Sabha in which he talked about the shift to an electric motor, Gandhi demonstrates how an EV car is different from the petrol/diesel one and asserts that it is about decentralising the power.

Claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative has failed, Gandhi on Monday had presented an alternative vision of greatly enhancing the participation of Dalits, tribals and OBCs, as well as ensuring that the energy and mobility revolution is not given up to the Chinese.

He, however, had conceded that successive governments, be it the Congress-led UPA or the the BJP-led NDA, have not been able to tackle unemployment and give a clear cut answer to the youth on employment.

Speaking on the Motion of Thanks to the President's address, Gandhi had centred his speech around on what a presidential address under an INDIA bloc government would look like. PTI ASK ZMN

Energy transition demands policy shift away from fossil fuels and monopoly control toward decentralised electric and battery technologies. The article critiques India's industrial policy amid a global energy transition to electric motors, batteries, and optics, arguing current policies still favour fossil fuels and allow concentration of economic power in large conglomerates. It contends that decentralising power through EV and battery technologies reshapes industry and that policy reorientation and inclusive industrial reform are needed to avoid ceding technological leadership and to broaden participation of marginalised groups.