The unthinkable has happened. The infallible has fallen. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s videos are drawing more flak than praises, quite possibly for the first time on a big scale. Thousands of dislikes were registered on the Prime Minister’s monthly radio address – Mann Ki Baat, on Youtube, among other videos posted on the platform.
The massive number of downvotes can be attributed to the angry young students from across the country, who are currently unhappy with the fact that the Centre is making them write the JEE-NEET entrance exam. On Sunday night, when this was noticed, many as 1.4 lakh downvotes were seen at 11:30 pm on the video shared by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) official YouTube, as against just 11,000 likes. Over 51,000 dislikes were also seen on the Prime Minister’s official handle.
Modi addressed the 68th episode of Mann Ki Baat on Sunday. The August edition of the talk was broadcast on the day following the country setting a grim world record in the highest single-day surge in fresh COVID-19 cases. Ahead of the program, #Mann_Ki_Nahi_Students_Ki_Baat trended on twitter, demanding him to address concerns regarding the conduct of JEE-NEET exams in September.
However, he chose to skip those concerns in his address and dealt with varied topics ranging from the Onam festival to the country’s toy industry, which clearly upset many users, who demanded the Prime Minister to answer the more serious questions.
In fact, the users vented their ire in the comments section. A user on the BJP’s video commented -. “I was expecting our PM to speak on recovering our economy, job loss of those millions of Indians and JEE NEET crisis. Not about toys or dogs at this point. Time matters.”
Another one wrote, “Expect the dislikes to be removed and the comments disabled. That’s how I expect them to handle criticism. Just silence it.” Curiously enough, many dislikes and comments across various YouTube handles were deleted. Yet, the record of 4 lakh dislikes on the BJP’s handle, outweigh the 33,000 likes. With India registering nearly 80,000 COVID-19 cases a day, the Centre clearly failing in curbing the rise in cases, and with a flailing economy, is this a sign of things to come? Only time will tell.
