Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the Narendra Modi government was obsessed with filling friends’ wallets while being oblivious to the grim reality of the falling incomes of the poor and the middle class.

Rahul tweeted: “Income of the poor down by 50%. Middle class down by 10%. Rich: increased 40%. Chahe janata ko mahngai, berozgari kitna bhi tadpaye, ‘suit-boot sarkar’ ka ek hi target — ‘mitron’ ki tijori bharti jaye (No matter how badly the scourge of unemployment and inflation torments the people, the suit-boot government has just one target — friends’ cashboxes should keep filling up).”

Rahul cited the India Consumer Economic Survey to buttress his charge, putting up a chart to explain the fall in incomes. Reports have suggested that over 80 per cent of Indians have suffered a loss of income since Covid struck. Rahul said the poor are becoming poorer and the rich richer in Modi’s India, a claim corroborated in an Oxfam report.

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh too flagged the stagnant wages in India and attacked the government’s pro-rich policy, saying: “Growth rate of real wages between 2014-15 and 2021-22 per year: 0.9 per cent for agricultural labour, 0.2 per cent for construction workers and 0.3 per cent for non-agricultural labour. But in the last five years, Adani’s wealth increased by 1,440 per cent. Mitra ka saath, mitra ka vikas!”

Ramesh also criticised the spectacle of the Prime Minister distributing appointment letters to new recruits amid the deepening unemployment crisis that required urgent policy initiatives for job creation.

Ramesh tweeted: “Governance has become ‘Maximum Tamasha’ for the Prime Minister. His Rozgar Mela is actually a monument to berozgaari (unemployment) caused by lakhs of MSME closures in the last 9 years. And how much do you want to personalise serious issues?”

This initiative by the Prime Minister comes against the background of his government’s mid-2022 promise to create 10 lakh jobs in the next 18 months. Modi had earlier promised two crore jobs every year but failed to deliver.

The recruits who got their appointment letters from Modi on Thursday were from various parts of the country. The jobs included those of train managers, stationmasters, senior commercial-cum-ticket clerks, inspectors, constables, stenographers, junior accountants, postal assistants, supervisors, teachers, librarians and nurses.

Appointment letters had never in the past been distributed by Prime Ministers. No Prime Minister had ever before conjured a public spectacle out of something as routine as a government recruitment process.