Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday was massively trolled on the Internet with Twitter users having a field day posting memes and jokes on his apparent gaffe at an event here in which he inadvertently attributed the discovery of gravity to Albert Einstein.
The minister was quick to issue a clarification and stated that his remarks were taken out of context, misinterpreted and sought to be presented with "very mischievous and baseless narrative".
"There is a very mischievous and baseless narrative sought to be presented about my closing comments at the board of trade meeting this morning. I was making a comment about encouraging Indian industry/Indian business to aspire for a one trillion dollar export target within the next five years and to encourage and enthuse the exporter community," Goyal said in a statement.
He said a section of media sought to remove the context of his comments and picked up one line to create "a very mischievous narrative".
Earlier today Goyal had remarked that one should not be concerned with GDP maths as maths never helped Einstein discover gravity. Tweets flew back and forth on the social media platform with users pointing out that it was Sir Issac Newton and not Einstein who discovered gravity. It soon began trending on Twitter.
Goyal made the comments while speaking to media persons following a meeting with the Board of Trade and sought to instil confidence that India was on right track to achieve the target of making the economy worth USD five trillion in the next five years.
The commerce minister in his clarification said: "The comment that I made had a certain context. Unfortunately, some friends have sought to remove the context, pick up one line and create a very mischievous narrative. I would like to share with people the exact context with which I made the comment."
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"I said 'Let's work together collectively with new ideas, with a new spirit of engagement and with new ideas believing nothing is impossible and together we can achieve the one trillion dollar target. I said 'don't get into the calculation, don't get into maths, maths has not helped and shall discover gravity," Goyal reproduced his comments.
He said the next line along with it is not being added and shown correctly.
"After this, I said 'If he had gone only by structured formula and what was past knowledge. I don't think there would have been any innovation in this world.' This operative line has not been correctly projected it is an effort to make the people confident, give them the spirit of positivity and in that spirit of positivity, I think if we live in the past we will never be able to make youth achieve very ambitious goals. This is a nation of youngsters who dare to dream big things in life and the entire group assembled in the board of trade meeting today is going with the enthusiasm," the minister said.
He further added: "Commitment and confidence that we can do one trillion dollar export, we are going to beyond the past, we are going to go beyond the structured way of thinking, we are going to break old barriers and engage the rest of the world so that we can become a one trillion dollar export country."
On Tuesday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew flak on Twitter after she said "millennial mindset" was to be held responsible for falling auto sales.
"The automobile and components industry has been affected by BS6 and the mindsets of millennial, who now prefer to have Ola and Uber rather than committing to buying an automobile," Sitharaman had said and very soon the hashtag BoycottMillennials began to trend on Twitter.
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