{"id":37827,"date":"2018-02-09T16:14:58","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T10:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=37827"},"modified":"2018-02-09T19:23:13","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T13:53:13","slug":"selling-pakodas-form-employment-idea-born-simplicity-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/opinion-and-analysis-comments\/selling-pakodas-form-employment-idea-born-simplicity-genius\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling pakodas as a form of employment is an idea showing simplicity of genius"},"content":{"rendered":"
~By Rajesh Sinha<\/strong><\/p>\n You can’t have your pakoda and eat it too. You cannot say it is a good thing but others cannot have it.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in an interview to a news channel recently: \u201cIf someone opens a \u2018pakoda\u2019 shop in front of your office, does that not count as employment? The person\u2019s daily earning of Rs200 will never come into any books or accounts. The truth is massive number of people are being employed.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement created a stir. What a solution to the problem of unemployment that almost every expert, including – and especially – the Harvard and Oxford-educated economists had termed as intractable. It was the simplicity of genius. But it seems the country just isn’t fully ready for this revolutionary idea.<\/p>\n Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam was detained by police when he was on his way to sell pakodas outside Mantralaya – as if it was a crime. Even if it was – which it isn’t, ask the PM – the police acted even before it was committed. Something like police rounding up some men from some park\/building claiming they were planning a dacoity.<\/p>\n Students selling pakodas near the venue for PM’s rally were arrested. In Uttar Pradesh, where Yogi Adityanath does not take kindly to anything ‘unpalatable’ to him, found the job of Samajwadi Party and Congress workers, and some students selling pakodas an offence serious enough to let the police thrash them for it.<\/p>\n Contrast this with Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari’s plans to have pakoda parties in different parts of the city. The BJP or its leaders, including the PM, do not seem to have any problems with this. Nor, apparently, has Delhi Police, which reports to the Union Home Ministry.<\/p>\n What do Tiwari’s pakodas have that others don’t? Why this kind of pakoda discrimination? Was the guy selling pakodas outside Zee TV office, whom the PM mentioned as a shining example of employment opportunities provided by his government, also from BJP?<\/p>\n The government has to answer. The Nation wants to know. It was an avenue of employment hailed by the top honcho himself, and he surely did not mean to say it was intended only for BJP workers – unless the BJP has secret, sinister plans to corner all pakoda outlets, lure citizens to its fold by offering them exclusive pakoda vending rights\u00a0 and declare all non-BJP pakoda sellers anti-nationals who should be packed off to Packistan, which is what Pakistan is meant for in the minds of ‘patritotic’ Hindutvaites who want India to belong only to them.<\/p>\n In fact, one of their leading lights, minister of state in Modi government Giriraj Singh, is said to have captured some 2.5 acres of this country’s land in Bihar, as part of this nationalist drive, no doubt. Since the Bihar government is headed by a person who is still not fully nationalist and patriotic like BJP, a case has been registered against Giriraj Singh.<\/p>\n