FM Nirmala Sitharaman’s ‘Ola Uber’ remark: Millennials strike back on social media

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while addressing a press conference in Chennai, on the slump in auto industry said something, perhaps inadvertently, which has caused a furore in the younger Indians. She said, “This sector (automobile) in particular, has been affected by several things such as the BS-VI movement, registration fee matter…and the mindset of millennials. Some studies show that millennials prefer not to commit to an EMI and instead prefer having Ola or Uber or taking the metro. So, a whole lot of factors are influencing it,”

She said this when a question was raised with respect to the automobile industry facing an economic crisis. The Union Minister was speaking at the press conference on the achievements of 100 days of Modi 2.0 when she came up with a linkage between millennials’ preference for Ola and Uber services and automobile slowdown.

Nirmala Sitharaman added that the Centre was doing everything it can to help the auto industry officials. On declining sales and job losses in the automobile sector, the minister said that the government departments have been allowed to buy new vehicles.

However, the netizens were not going to take this "millennial blaming" analogy quietly, and through social media, twitterati did what Millennials do best, “Twitter-bashing.”

As a result the #SayItLikeNirmalaTai and #BoycottMillennials started trending on Twitter.

Here is a collection of some of the tweets: