Returning awards is manufactured revolt: Jaitley

His outburst comes as a growing band of Sahitya Akademi award winners have chosen to return their awards citing incidents like the Dadri killing or murder of rationalist writers. So, it is not a crisis manufactured, the reaction is not a manufactured one, for the sake of opposition or for the sake of undermining Modi’s government, or for the sake of publicity. I am neither questioning their academic merits nor their right to have political prejudices. It says that without his decisions and stewardship of India’s financial direction, India would not have achieved what it has. “A few questions to the protestors: How many of them courted arrest, protested or raised their voice against the dictatorship of Mrs. Indira Gandhi during the Emergency? Was their conscience not shaken by the corruption involving lakhs of crores between 2004 and 2014?” the finance minister said.

Addressing a mid-career training programme of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, Jaitley said subsidy rationalisation, implementation of direct benefit transfer, bank recapitalisation, investment in infrastructure and irrigation sectors were priority areas of the government.

The party alleged that it showed that the Narendra Modi dispensation was “insincere, insensitive and unconcerned” to what is happening in the country.

While incidents of religious intolerance in the nation seem to be on the rise, is this denial by the BJP an adequate response? There is no atmosphere of intolerance in the country.