#BoycottMillennials trends in India after finance minister blames young people for poor car sales

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has blamed the ongoing slowdown in the Indian automotive sector on millennials, and the online meme merchants wasted no time in making hay out of the comments.

It didn’t take long for commuting millennials to get to work creating memes under the hashtag #BoycottMillennials, which trended across the country overnight.

Sithraman said on Tuesday that the slowdown in the sector can be traced to a number of factors but, naturally, any mention of millennials triggered the Twitteratti. 

The minister claimed that millennials would rather take a cab or the metro than commit to taking on debt to finance a vehicle of their own.

“Some studies do tell us, the mindset of the millennials who are now preferring not to commit an EMI (loan) towards buying automobiles, but would consider taking [car services] Ola, Uber and everything else or take the metro. So, [a] whole lot of factors are influencing the automobiles sector,” she said.

August saw sales of cars dwindle in India, with domestic sales falling 31.6 percent year-on-year, the lowest number since 1997-98. Sales in July were down 18.71 percent from 2018, marking the sharpest decline in almost two decades. 

So, while Indian millennials may never own cars, they sure own the meme game.

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