A couple of months back, our honorable and unquestionably efficient Union finance minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley, made a proposal as part of the budgetary proceedings that caused considerable distress amongst jewelers: 1% excise duty on jewellery. As it happens more often than not at such junctures, the jewellers didn’t take too kindly to this and various jeweller’s associations across the country called for a nationwide strike to express their disenchantment with this rather ingenious decision, the sort of decision that obviously no other government formed by even the Congress could’ve taken. Such articulate thought, much diligent action.
Perhaps paying credence to the almost intuitive, undoubtedly meticulous performance from the government’s end since BJP was brought to power about 2 years ago, the media has decided not to rake up much of a storm and so the general masses have produced nothing more than a lull, unless they own a jewellery store, when one tries to discuss the issue. There was a time, though, when Pranab Mukherjee had also tried to introduce what Jaitley did a few months back, only to be at the receiving end of scrutiny and a great deal of negative hullabaloo, which forced the Congress to drop the ball on the proposal.
It seems, however, that it isn’t somewhat logical to express the same skepticism in the wake of a similar situation for the BJP government because that means that you’re an anti-national and a potential terrorist threat. In the age of atheism and proliferation of modern thought, you can question god but you can’t question anything that is even remotely associated with Shri Narendra Modi.
Entertain the notion of questioning the insurmountable wisdom of Modi? Blasphemy!
