RAMDAS ATHAWALE: 'RAISE THE POOR, DON'T DRAG DOWN THE RICH'

"Lift the bottom, don’t pull down the top": Athawale doubles down on quotas, touts Modi, and riffs in trademark style at India News Manch 2025

- TDG NETWORK

At the India News Manch 2025 political conclave, Union Minister of State Ramdas Athawale turned a wide-ranging conversation on “samrasta” (social harmony) into a mix of policy claims, political jabs, and the one-liners that have made him a fixture on television panels and Parliament soundbites.

Asked whether the Social Justice Ministry's schemes are reaching Dalit and Adivasi communities “at the very last line,” Athawale framed social justice as upward mobility rather than redistribution. “A government exists to lift the person at the bottom,” he said, adding, “not to pull down the person at the top.” Equality, he argued, follows only “when the person at the bottom comes up.”

Invoking B.R. Ambedkar Athawale said social equality must be paired with economic equality: “Everyone should get social justice, and everyone should get economic justice.”

With India’s population “140 crore,” he said, the Constitution’s promise of justice must apply to every citizen.