Politicians in India are always under the limelight for various things they do and say. Nothing different has happened with our nation’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. A statement she made on 10th September has sucked her into a flood of satirical criticism.
Nirmala Sithraman was at an event in Chennai when she made a statement. The actual words that were used by the union minister as stated in the Indian Express were,
“Now that’s why I periodically remind that the automobiles in particular and the components together, have been affected by several things, inclusive of BS-VI movement, inclusive of that registration fee related matter, which we have deferred till June, inclusive of the mindset, some studies do tell us, the mindset of the millennials who are now preferring not to commit an EMI (equated monthly installment) towards buying automobiles, but would consider taking (cab aggregators) Ola, Uber and everything else or take the Metro. So, (a) whole lot of factors are influencing the automobiles sector.”
Although she mentioned the actuality of the automobile sector, it did not go down well with the millennials. There can be some key reasons behind this:
- Why must people opt for buying vehicles when the government has made traveling through metro much affordable?
- Isn’t it good that the citizens are using public transport?
- Isn’t fewer cars on the road, healthy for the environment?
- Isn’t it better to pay for Ola and Uber rather than paying the heavy fines?
There were loopholes in the statement Nirmala Sitharaman made. She mentioned that the research studies showed millennials behavior as one of the reasons behind the slowdown, but she failed to provide the name of the research study.
However, we must also keep in mind that she stated other crucial reasons too behind the slowdown and millennials’ mindset was one of those reasons.
In less than 24 hours after the statement, the Twitterati went wild. Nirmala Sitharaman’s this statement went viral and a hashtag #boycottmillennials started trending on twitter. The millennials across the country took offense and started mocking by taking to the internet to express their dissent.
Let us have a look at some of the tweets that played mockery on the minister’s statement.