- Wednesday, March 12, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
AMERICAN economist Steve Hanke on Tuesday (19) slammed the firing of a civic service staff member in India for carrying pictures of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath. The incident happened in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday (16).
In a tweet, Hanke, who is a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, the US, and a former member of late American president Ronald Reagan’s council of economic advisers, said, “An Indian man loses his job after wheeling garbage, which happens to contain a picture of PM Modi & Minister Yogi Adityanath. In India, there is not even freedom of trash. BJP fanatics control the streets. Take a look at the scene.”
An Indian man loses his job after wheeling garbage, which happens to contain a picture of PM Modi & Minister Yogi Adityanath. In India, there is not even freedom of trash. BJP fanatics control the streets. Take a look at the scene.pic.twitter.com/7ZkyDQldNa
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) July 18, 2022
The worker, identified as Bobby, was fired by Mathura Nagar Nigam — the civic authorities of the pilgrim city of Mathura — after the photographs of the two top leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were found in his garbage cart, officials said.
A video went viral showing the staff member getting stopped by a traveller from the western Indian state of Rajasthan and asked about the discarded pictures among the trash.
Bobby then told the man that he was merely carrying what he found in the garbage from a spot near a college and was unaware that they belonged to the prime minister of the country and the chief minister of UP, the video showed.
“We came to know through media that photos of prime minister and chief minister were being carried in hand driven garbage vehicle by safai karamchari (cleanliness staff member) named Bobby. This garbage was lifted from a location near Intermediate College and mistakenly there were photos of PM and CM,” Satyendra Tiwari, additional commissioner for Mathura Nagar Nigam, said.
He then said that the concerned staff member, a contractual one, was fired from the job because of negligence.
The incident got mixed response on social media with many sympathising with Bobby.
Meanwhile, the sanitation workers’ union of Uttar Pradesh on Monday (18) warned that it would go on a statewide strike if the fired worker was not reinstated, the Times of India reported.
“I had no idea about the pictures in my cart, I got to know about them when two passers-by took a video and told me. I request the authorities to please forgive me. I am a poor man and have to take care of my family,” Bobby was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
The union also gave a memorandum to the municipal commissioner of the city of Agra informing about their warning of a protest.
