Union Minister for Railways and Commerce Piyush Goyal has been among the key ministers in the Narendra Modi government who have been tasked to counter opposition criticism of the government's policies.
But on Thursday, Goyal found himself in a spot when he declared “maths didn't help [Albert] Einstein discover gravity”. Goyal was speaking to the press at a Board of Trade meeting in Delhi, along with Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
Addressing concerns about the economic slowdown, Goyal declared, “Don't get into calculations you see on television that if you are looking at a $5 trillion economy, country will need to grow at 12 per cent (annually). Today, it is growing at 6-7 per cent. Don't get into those maths... the maths never helped Einstein discover gravity. If he had gone only by structured formulae and what was past knowledge, I don't think there would have been any innovation in this world.”
Goyal got some basic facts wrong and it is not surprising social media decided to tutor him. Albert Einstein did not discover gravity, but Sir Isaac Newton did. Newton explained his law of gravity in 1687, over 250 years before Einstein became famous. In addition, both Newton and Einstein paid considerable attention to formulae and methodology in their research. Finally, mathematical calculations of GDP growth are considered an integral part of economic analysis and forecasting.
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The Congress got off the blocks quickly to target Goyal. It tweeted, “Piyush Goyal is correct. Einstein did not require maths to discover gravity, but Sir Isaac Newton did. FYI, maths is also required to #FixTheEconomy”.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been subject to trolling for days for recently attributing the slump in automobile sales to changing attitudes among millennials, who she claimed were opting for ride-hailing apps like Uber and Ola.