NEW DELHI: CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is raking up former Congress overseas chairman Sam Pitroda’s remarks in poll campaign to divert attention from real issues, such as unemployment, poverty and price rise.
“Sam Pitroda is Sam Pitroda… He is an international citizen. There is nobody who can really influence him to write something they want...He is an independent person who keeps writing. He happens to be closer to the Congress. But today Congress has divested him of that responsibility also. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is just making this an issue because he is not addressing the real issues,” Yechury told reporters while responding to questions on Pitroda’s statement on ethnic appearance of Indians living in different parts of the country.
Pitroda stoked a controversy with his statement during an interview. Reflecting upon democracy in India, he said, “We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live to gether, leaving aside a few fights here and there. We could hold a country together as diverse as India, where people on the East look like Chinese, people on West look like Arab, people on North look like white and maybe people on South look like Africans.”
He resigned as the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress after the BJP created an uproar over “racist” remarks.
Yechury said Modi is not speaking about problems of the people struggling to earn their livelihoods. “The PM is not addressing the crisis. The highest level of unemployment, growing poverty, continuous price rise, household borrowing to survive, and household indebtedness have soared...A few millionaires and billionaires are making money. Inequality has horrifically widened. These are the real issues for the people in the country.
The Prime Minister is not talking about them because he has got no answers or solutions, ” Yechury said, adding that Modi is relying on communal passions to sharpen polarisation to win the elections.