Cartoon Click: Tomato Hackathon - People to Govt’s Rescue?

In yet another stunning display of the government's unparalleled ability to tackle pressing issues with ‘cutting-edge’ tech solutions, the Centre has now launched the ‘Tomato Grand Challenge Hackathon’. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution has invited students, research scholars, teachers, industries, start-ups and professionals to suggest innovative ideas to reduce the prices of tomatoes – in an exercise similar to one conducted before for onion prices.

While the people have been hoping that the government would come up with a rescue plan amid the debilitating price rise, the government seems to have returned the favour – hoping that people themselves find a way out of the crisis and rescue the government instead!

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government may not have displayed much faith in public consultations on various contentious issues so far, but it finally seems to have woken up, albeit in a limited way.

In any case, shouldn’t one give credit where the credit is due? Could the Congress government and former PM Jawaharlal Nehru ever create an opportunity for the people to participate in such a tech-forward razzle-dazzle [amid roaring inflation, but that’s an aside]? After all, Modi hai toh mumkin hai.