Rahul Gandhi’s new slogan: Arhar Modi

After his famous “suit-boot ki sarkar” swipe at the NDA government, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday once again made a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying during a discussion in the Lok Sabha on price rise that the new slogan of the day was “Arhar Modi”, a reference to the rising prices of pulses.

Intervening during the discussion, Mr Gandhi took repeated swipes at Mr Modi and tore into his election promise to bring down prices. A visibly cut-up finance minister Arun Jaitley, who was present in the House, later counter-attacked the Opposition Congress, saying that despite inheriting double-digit inflation from the UPA government the Modi-led dispensation had brought it down to a single digit and hoped that a good monsoon would further lower prices of essential commodities.

Even other Opposition MPs, notably Bhartruhari Mahtab of the BJD and Saugata Roy of the Trinamul Congress, said the government had no remedy to tackle the “demon” of inflation and that it was mainly depending on windfalls in terms of low crude prices and a good monsoon. Mr Mahtab gave credit to RBI governor Raghuram Rajan for trying his best to control inflation but did not name him, saying only that the person trying to deal with inflation was now going back to Chicago because someone in the ruling dispensation had asserted that he was not a nationalist.

Earlier, in a speech of about 15 minutes, Mr Gandhi needled the Prime Minister on his election slogan, asking people to make him a “chowkidar (watchman)”, and not PM. He said “theft” of pulses had taken place under Mr Modi’s nose but the PM had not said a word about it. Mr Gandhi asked the PM to give a date by which the prices of pulses would come down.

The Congress MP, in the seventh major intervention of his career, said, “During elections, Modiji had said ‘Make me a chowkidar.’ Now, there is theft of dal under the very nose of the chowkidar, but the chowkidar has not uttered a word. He is mum. Now he has become a big person. Leave that job of chowkidari to the Congress.”

Making a jibe about the BJP slogan “Har Har Modi”, used during the Lok Sabha polls, he said “now people are saying ‘Arhar Modi’.”

“You may make as many hollow promises as you want, but give us a date by when the prices of dal will come down,” the Congress leader added.

Mr Gandhi said that Mr Modi, while attacking the then UPA government at a poll rally in Himachal Pradesh in February 2014, had said, “‘Ma-bachche raat raat rote hain, aasoon pee ke sote hain (Mother and child cry every night and fall sleep drinking their own tears).’ What a dialogue!” He repeated the phrase thrice. Mr Modi was not present in the House.

Mr Jaitley counter-attacked and reeled out statistics in the Lok Sabha to assert that the NDA government had brought down inflation. “Any form of bluster is not a substitute for statistics,” he told the Congress vice-president while intervening in the debate and asked him to compare the status of inflation during the UPA government and that prevailing now.

Referring to Mr Gandhi’s attack on Mr Modi for criticising the then Congress-led government over inflation in February 2014, Mr Jaitley said, “This is a topic of statistics and not sloganeering. The UPA had left government in a serious state and it is but natural that any contesting candidate before election would say that if I come to power, I will try to bring inflation down. No one should have any objection to that.”

Insisting that the Modi government had reduced inflation and kept it under control, Mr Jaitley said he expects it to fall further due to a “good” monsoon. He acknowledged that high prices of pulses is a concern and said steps are being taken to address this by narrowing the mismatch between demand and supply.