Memes Flood Social Media After PM Modi’s Speech

On May 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation amid the coronavirus crisis. In his speech, the PM announced a massive economic package of 20 lakh crores called ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’, which approximately amounts to 10% of India’s GDP. He also said the fourth phase of lockdown would have lesser rules and regulations, which is being considered a bad move by some, given the rapidly rising number of cases.

While citizens listened to the much-awaited speech hoping for some clarity on how to move forward and deal with the pandemic, the half-an-hour long speech did quite the opposite — the use of tough, obscure Hindi words only confused them further.

Within minutes of the speech being aired, Twitter was flooded with memes by netizens, especially non-Hindi-speaking ones, claiming to not having understood a single word of it.

‘Aatmanirbhar’, meaning ‘self-sufficient’, was a word that frequently popped up during the PM’s speech and in Google searches by confused Millenials.

#Aatmanirbhar trended on Twitter with thousands of tweets, and even some official accounts took this chance to promote themselves.

‘Aatmanirbhar’ was not the only thing that inspired memes — there were a lot of hidden gems in PM Modi’s speech, and netizens got creative in its aftermath.