The twitterati was abuzz all day on August 13 after The Telegraph released an image of Rahul Gandhi’s notes of his Lok Sabha speech. The image went viral and hundreds of people from around the country stormed the micro blogging site with cartoons and jokes at the expense of the Congress Vice President. The hashtag #PappuSoDuffer was trending on Twitter for a number of hours.

Gandhi lashed out at Sushma Swaraj and PM Modi during his Lok Sabha speech on August 12. He condemned Swaraj’s actions towards Lalit Modi and criticised the Prime Minister for being absent from Parliament and not speaking on the many issues at hand. Many have questioned the reason behind his emphatic and aggressive speech and some believe it has everything to do with pointers he held clutched in his hand.

NDTV

It is common knowledge that most people in India believe Rahul Gandhi to be quite obtuse, thus the nickname ‘Pappu’. However, what is disconcerting is that people will find inane reasons to reiterate this point over and over again. It is hardly surprising that politicians use cue cards during speeches, but what got everyone so interested about Rahul Gandhi’s cue cards was that all the Hindi words were written in English. Therefore, raising questions about his proficiency in the language.

During a time when the country’s poor suffer from wide spread malnourishment, our currency is falling faster than Game of Thrones characters and we are constantly on the brink of war with Pakistan, it pains me to think that the only thing people are interested in is Rahul Gandhi’s Roman Hindi and his notes during a Lok Sabha speech.

Why has this story garnered so much attention? Why do the notes of his speech matter more than the speech itself? Is it time we stop letting social media sites like Twitter and Facebook dictate what traditional media classifies as news?

A few masterpieces from Twitter:

Feature image source: PTI