New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s use of labels such as “naraaz phoopa” was part of his modus operandi of giving the opposition a new adjective every year to keep his own “failures” hidden.
The opposition party also accused him of misusing the platform of Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), where he addressed the centenary celebrations on Saturday, by turning it into “yet another political campaign”.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, “Narendra Modi ji, yesterday, you visited SRCC at Delhi University. It was an opportunity for dialogue on the country’s youth, education, and their future. But alas, instead of facing the youth’s questions, the speech turned into yet another political campaign.”
“Modi ji’s Modus Operandi is to suppress questions in a democracy and give the opposition a new adjective every year so that his own failures remain hidden! Naraaz phoopa, Dimagi Naxal, Urban Naxal, Khan Market Gang, Andolan-jeevi, Parjeevi,” Kharge said in a post in Hindi on X.
Adjectives keep changing, but the Modi government’s “anti-people policies” do not change, Kharge said.
“Modi ji, outreach is only needed when you become out of reach. The prime minister showed his ‘report card’. The country’s youth is also standing up with its report card, and it includes unemployment, government recruitments stuck for years, students troubled by paper leaks, increasingly expensive education, dwindling scholarship opportunities, and growing pressure on the autonomy of universities,” Kharge said.
Listen to “Chhatron Ki Goonj” as solutions won’t come from beating around the bush, Kharge said.
Congress’ media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said an imposition of superiority is often the worst expression of an inferiority complex.
“After 12 years as prime minister, the fact that he still has no vision, no inspiring message, and nothing positive to offer the country’s youth at a prestigious institution like SRCC and instead resorts to name-calling the opposition is a damning indictment of a prime minister who has run out of ideas, run out of substance, and apparently run out of anything meaningful to say,” Khera said on X.
Modi on Saturday asserted that India is not only growing at 7.8 per cent but also creating employment opportunities despite wars and disruptions, demonstrating the country’s strength, and said that those responsible for pushing the economy into the “fragile five” cannot digest it.
Addressing the centenary celebrations of SRCC, Modi also said that those who once spread terror have been silenced and if today Pakistan commits any misdeed, the Indian Army strikes back on their own soil.
He said from Jammu and Kashmir to the Northeast, there is peace and Naxalism has been dismantled.
Recalling that the country was struggling on every front in 2013, when he last addressed SRCC students as Gujarat chief minister, Modi said corruption, terrorism and inflation were unchecked, but India is now far more secure economically and socially.
However, some people’s frustration is increasing after seeing this, he said. “For such people, I had given a homoeopathy dose from the Red Fort (during Independence Day address)… ‘dimagi Naxal’.
“When I said ‘dimagi Naxal’, all such people came to the forefront and started criticising me. People who were promoting dimagi Naxalism, their true colour can be witnessed by the people,” he said.
Modi said India’s 7.8 per cent growth has also come at a time when the war in West Asia is ongoing and when disruptions related to trade have persisted. Achieving such growth demonstrates India’s strength, he said, referring to the GDP growth rate for the April-June quarter.
“We all know that those responsible for pushing India into the ‘fragile five’ cannot digest the numbers of India’s growth,” he said in a veiled attack at the Congress and its allies that have questioned the credibility of the growth figures.
Outside the campus, the prime minister said, the students will find two types of people — “those who positively transform the power of society into the power of the nation and the others who turn into angry uncles (naraaz phoopa) as soon as any work begins”.
