A day after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a bizarre statement during a Lok Sabha debate that she came from a family that did not consume onions, netizens are having a field day on Twitter. Some users thought her comment, amid onion prices rising as much as 500 per cent in certain regions, was insensitive, arrogant and irresponsible.
Nirmala Sitharaman doesn't care about the economy because she doesn't travel economy class.#SayItLikeNirmalaTai
— PuNsTeR™ (@Pun_Starr) December 4, 2019
I don't eat onions much, so don't worry - @nsitharaman
— DrVinayKate (@DrVinayKate) December 5, 2019
I get free petrol as a minister, so don't worry about prices - @RamdasAthawale
GDP figure won't be useful in future - @nishikant_dubey
Maths didn't help Einstein discover gravity - @PiyushGoyal #SayItLikeNirmalaTai
We don't eat beef, so no one in the country should.
— JuNgLeBoY (@kurinjiboy) December 5, 2019
We don't eat onion and garlic,so we don't care about the price hike.
We use free petrol, so we don't care about petrol price hike.
Our phone bills are paid by Government,so we don't care price hike. #SayItLikeNirmalaTai
😂 Govt doesn't care about cashless economy, because Government has left no cash in economy.#SayItLikeNirmalaTai https://t.co/AqHCUZ4i50
— Nitin Kandharkar (@imNRK17) December 4, 2019
A few Twitter users have even dug up an old Sitharaman tweet—dated 2013, when she was in the opposition—in which she questioned the then UPA-2 government for spike in onion prices.
She eat onion only when she is in opposition.#SayItLikeNirmalaTai pic.twitter.com/MnUHo76cd6
— Vishal Modi (@vishalmodi38) December 5, 2019
1.3 Billion Citizens: We're not able to buy Onions due to price rise.
— Irfan ˗ˏˋ 🚀 ˎˊ˗ (@simplyirfan) December 5, 2019
Finance Minister: I don't eat Onion #SayItLikeNirmalaTaipic.twitter.com/eTKeJb9iIK
Sitharaman made the comment while responding to Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule's question on the reasons behind fall in onion production in the country. "I don't eat a lot of onions and garlic, so don't worry. I belong to a family which does not eat onion and garlic," Sitharaman said in response during debate on Wednesday.
Onion prices remain high in the range of Rs 75-100/kg across major cities of the country. The prices are on a northward spiral in India following crop failure owing to indifferent monsoon pattern in onion-producing states like Mahrashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The cabinet has approved import of 1.2 lakh tonnes of onions to improve the domestic supply and control prices. The government has already banned exports and imposed stock holding limits to check price rise.