People also made fun of photographs in which the PM appeared to be looking away from the deity and at the cameras. ‘Cameras target some while some target the camera’ was one of the wisecracks. The Prime Minister posed before a clock at the station with the dial showing it was 1 am: proof that he works 18 hours a day as he has repeatedly claimed. Someone commented, “While PM supporters are happy, my complaint is that nobody thanks the cameraman”, who too might have logged in an 18-hour-day.The Prime Minister getting him self photographed with construction workers, showering flower petals on them and then sitting down with them for a meal came in for high praise. Supporters felt it was a beautiful gesture. The uncharitable pointed out the flask specially kept for the PM and his tray placed properly while the trays placed before the workers had been placed facing the wrong side. More tellingly, none of the workers seemed to have turned their trays, so frozen with fright they looked.The event management received full marks from observers. Only the habitual critics carped at the misuse of the taxpayers’ money. “Those who keep taunting JNU students for wasting taxpayers’ money do not find this vulgar display obscene,” asked an irate housewife in Lucknow, but on condition of anonymity. Others questioned the Government spending public money on building airports, expressways and temples when people in Uttar Pradesh, as elsewhere, are grappling with inflation, unemployment and hunger; when by the Government’s own admission it has been forced to reduce allocations for MGNREGA, scholarships and on welfare schemes. That the Prime Minister used the ‘official’ event as a political platform no longer surprised people. But there were doubts being voiced whether the religion card would be as effective in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 and it was in the last assembly election in 2017.The fact that BJP is forced to work overtime to ensure crowds to attend PM’s meetings in the state is cited as indicative of public anger. School children in uniform and MGNREGA workers, it is being alleged, were mobilised for the PM’s rallies in Uttar Pradesh and even then chairs were unoccupied and people streamed out while he was speaking.
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