Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday claimed that in the future, Harvard Business School will have case studies on failures of the Narendra Modi-led government, such as its handling of the coronavirus crisis, demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.
Gandhi, in his tweet, included a video that showed Modi giving a speech while the number of coronavirus cases in India continue to increase. Modi had announced a “Janata Curfew” on March 22, three days before a nationwide lockdown began, and had asked people to bang utensils and light lamps to thank healthcare workers.
“The Mahabharata war was won in 18 days,” Modi had said while announcing the nationwide lockdown. “The war against the coronavirus will take 21 days.” However, the lockdown was extended four times.
On Monday, India overtook Russia to become the third-most affected country in the world, with 6,97,413 cases, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. As many as 19,693 people have died so far.
The government has been criticised for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, particularly about the plight of migrant labourers, lakhs of whom walked to their hometowns following the lockdown because of the absence of transport facilities.
This is not the first time Gandhi has attacked the government over the past few weeks. Gandhi had on June 15 quoted physicist Albert Einstein to criticise the government and said the lockdown enforced to contain the coronavirus is proof that the “only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance”. The following day, he tweeted about the high mortality rate in Gujarat, Modi’s home state, claiming that the “Gujarat model” had been “exposed”.
China crisis
The Congress leader has also constantly targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party-led dispensation and Modi for their response to the China crisis.
On July 3, Gandhi claimed that while the prime minister says the Chinese Army did not enter Indian territory during a violent clash with its Indian counterpart on June 15, the people of Ladakh hold a different view of the matter. On June 21, the Congress leader had claimed that Modi had “surrendered” to China, after he told a meeting of Opposition party leaders that Chinese troops had not entered Indian territory.
On Monday, BJP National President JP Nadda lashed out at Gandhi, claiming that he continues to question the Indian Army, without attending a single meeting of the standing committee on defence, PTI reported. “Rahul Gandhi belongs to that glorious dynastic tradition where as far as defence is concerned, committees don’t matter, commissions do,” Nadda alleged, in a snide reference to the Bofors scandal during the government of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s.
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