PM to Tamil newspaper: World’s unemployed getting jobs in India

We bring you a selection of comments, statements and quips tweeted during the day to make sense of what is happening in the country and how people are reacting to them.

We start with two tweets by former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who sardonically refers to the Enforcement Department’s submission to the Supreme Court on Monday that as many as 36 industrialists have escaped from India during the last few years after committing fraud.

He also refers to an interview granted by the Prime Minister to a Tamil newspaper in which he claimed that there was no crisis of jobs in the country.

“If PM's claims on employment are true (interview to a Tamil newspaper), then, there is no unemployment in this country. Not only that, many persons are holding two jobs! Also, India is giving jobs not only to Indians but to unemployed youth from all over the world!”

“ED has given itself and the Modi government a certificate of honour: not only the five well known persons, but 36 persons have fled the country after allegedly committing financial fraud. Who was the watchman who left the doors open?”

Referring to union minister Maneka Gandhi’s warning that villages would be classified according to the percentage of votes received by the BJP, commentator Dhruv Rathee tweeted, “ BJP wants to do Tukde Tukde of all villages in India based on how they voted for BJP. What will happen to villages who cast 0% votes to BJP? Will they be given to Pakistan as a gift?”

The snowballing controversy over a plot in Gandhinagar the ownership of which has been claimed by both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley prompted the political editor of Caravan magazine Hartosh Singh Bal to tweet, “ Are Modi and Jaitely involved in a dispute over property? is one looking after land for the other? why on the PMO website/ poll affidavits have both been claiming ownership of the same plot of land in Gandhinagar? & this while Modi owns another plot that he does not even mention !”

While the Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI), which spearheaded AADHAAR, has lodged an FIR with Hyderabad Police complaining a breach of data for voter-profiling, it had consistently denied the possibility of any breach till now. It had even told the Supreme Court that no breach of AADHAAR data base was possible.

This prompted the anonymous French cyber security expert who had been warning UIDAI that its data base was vulnerable, to tweet: “ Where are you now? @UIDAI, I can’t hear your “#Aadhaar is secure”. For more than a year I offer my help, you have not answered me once. I hope you will face the consequences of this irresponsible behaviour.

Yet another tweet points to the fact that in our brave , new world, nothing is secret any longer and Maneka Gandhi’s threat of profiling villages on the basis of voting behaviour is not far-fetched.

“Combined with Polling booth data, Data analytics and Panna Pramukhs, it is possible to get 90% accuracy on predicting on who voted for which party at Individual level and hence Secret Ballot isn't a secret.”