New Delhi: On the occasion of Narendra Modi’s 70th birthday, Twitter users took it upon themselves to remind the prime minister of the rising unemployment and the acute economic crisis facing the country.
Several people and political parties simultaneously launched a campaign on social media and the day was soon dubbed “National Unemployment Day” on social media. Hashtags like ‘# 17Sept17Hrs17Minutes’, ‘# राष्ट्रीयबेरोजगारदिवस’ and ‘#NationalUnemploymentDay’ have been trending on Twitter since morning. These hashtags are part of a protest campaign against the lack of government employment.
At the time of publication, the hashtag # राष्ट्रीय_बेरोजगारी_दिवस (or national unemployment day) had more than 1.68 million tweets.
The unemployment rate in India has been slowing steadily and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who lost their jobs in the last quarter. According to the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), since the lockdown was imposed in March, there have been significant job losses across the country, with an overall unemployment rate of over 23% in the last week of March 2020. A recovery in recent months, but unemployment is still above pre-closing levels.
The organization’s recent estimate has shown that the employment situation worsened since the beginning of March 2020, before the lockdown was put in place, and then spiked rapidly in the last week of the month and the first week of April 2020. Since so the downward trend has continued. The National Statistical Office (NSO) report also indicated that India’s April-June quarter GDP contracted 23.9%, the first contraction in more than 40 years.
The anguish could be felt in the memes and messages that began to flow on Twitter since the beginning of September 17.
Nehru’s Birthday – Children’s Day
Modi ji’s birthday – # बेरोजगार_दिवस#NationalUnemploymentDay pic.twitter.com/28v4Lo2BzY– Deepak Khatri (@ Deepakkhatri812) September 17, 2020
Where are the promised 2 trillion jobs? #NationalUnemploymentDay pic.twitter.com/vFkyk3CUGK
– Juhie Singh (@juhiesingh) September 17, 2020
Congressional Leader Rahul Gandhi also joined in and criticized the Center for the rising unemployment rate in India amid the economic crisis. “Mass unemployment has prompted the youth of this country to call #NationalUnemploymentDay today. Employment is dignity. How long will the government deny it? Gandhi tweeted.
In his tweet, Gandhi tagged a Hindi news report about how more than 1 crore of Indians are looking for work, while currently only 1.77 lakh is available in all states.
यही कारण है कि देश का युवा आज # राष्ट्रीय_बेरोजगारी_दिवस मनाने पर मजबूर है।
रोज़गार सम्मान है।
सरकार कब तक ये सम्मान देने से पीछे हटेगी?Mass unemployment has forced young people to call today #NationalUnemploymentDay.
Employment is dignity.
How long will the government deny it? pic.twitter.com/FC2mQAW3oJ– Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 17, 2020
But Modi’s supporters across India continued to celebrate his birthday with much fanfare.
In some places, the celebration took a strange turn and party members compared Modi to Hindu mythological figures. In Maharashtra, BJP spokesperson Avadhut Wagh compared Modi to the eleventh incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. “Hon PM @narendramodi Ji is the 11th #Avatar (incarnation) of Lord Vishnu (sic),” BJP Wagh tweeted.
These comparisons are not new. Also in the past, party leaders have compared Modi to the mythological incarnation of Vishnu called Kalki Avatar. Three years ago, the party leader in Manipur, Laishram Jatra Singh, had published a book entitled Kalki Avatar and Narendra Modi.
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