While his government may have failed spectacularly at growing the economy, generating employment and handling foreign policy, there is no denying there are two things that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been exceptionally good at: Blaming others for the things he himself is guilty of, andCopying what others do (and then taking the credit for it).Blaming othersOne has to laugh at Modi’s “naraaz phoopha (upset uncle)” remark at Sri Ram College of Commerce’s centenary event, not because it is particularly funny, but because it is so badly aimed. It was fairly obvious that the dig was aimed at Rahul Gandhi, but if anyone missed the point, the BJP’s IT cell helpfully removed all doubt with its memes and AI-generated songs.Narendra Modi calling Rahul Gandhi an “angry uncle” is a bit rich. The first hallmark of an effective barb is it has to at least make sense on first hearing. The fact that Modi is 20 years older than Rahul makes Modi more the “uncle” in the situation. Secondly, naraaz phoopha which literally means “an offended/annoyed paternal aunt’s husband” is a very recognisable trope in North Indian families.A naraaz phoopha is the perpetually slighted and self-important uncle at a family wedding who:thinks he hasn’t been given enough importance,is annoyed about where he has been seated,complains about the food, arrangements or accommodation,feels he wasn’t properly consulted,sits apart with a long face,threatens to leave early, andexpects everyone to come and placate him.If anyone is a “self-important uncle with a long face” in national politics at the moment, it is the prime minister, not Rahul Gandhi. Yes, Rahul’s speeches are no-holds barred attacks on the central government and its policies, but they are more the remonstrations of the “angry young(er) man” and hardly the utterances of someone personally offended or slighted. It is Modi, in fact, who takes personal offense and hardly ever passes up opportunities to take personal digs at the opposition, and at Rahul Gandhi in particular.Copying othersWhat is making the Modi-Rahul dynamic even more interesting is that the prime minister, while heaping scorn and invective on the LoP also seems bent on copying his modus operandi. After Rahul launched his Chhatron Ki Goonj rallies, Modi has also stepped up his ‘outreach’ to Gen Z who just might be justified in saying the PM’s “got no chill”, considering the cringeworthy attempts of Ministers like Giriraj Singh who said, “I am a 74-year-old new baby born” to an auditorium full of students at NIFT, Mumbai.In contrast to Gandhi’s collegial and dialogic style, Modi’s interactions with the youth are meticulously scripted, as, indeed, are his highly choreographed Metro rides, a recent one to the SRCC centenary celebrations being a prime example. The children and young people riding in the Metro coach with the prime minister looked like anything but children engaged in a spontaneous conversation with a leader they were genuinely excited to meet and greet.One of the photographs Modi shared with the captioned, “Metro moments… On the way to the SRCC programme and back.”Modi may have used Gen Z words like “OG” and “flex” in his speech at SRCC, but it was abundantly clear that the audience for the event had been pre-selected and pre-coached. Three days later he addressed a large youth/Gen-Z gathering on September 8, 2026 at the Pavilion Ground of Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat. Staged as a youth/rock-concert-style event, Modi entered on a Y-shaped ramp with ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Aari Aari’ from Dhurandhar playing. We Will, We Will Rock You🔥🔥Pure Modi Magic at Vadodara 😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/4XSdjMiB68— BhikuMhatre (@MumbaichaDon) September 8, 2026The words to We Will Rock You, incidentally, go something like:“Buddy, you’re an old man, poor manPleadin’ with your eyes, gonna make you some peace some dayYou got mud on your faceBig disgraceSomebody better put you back into your placeWe will we will rock you.”The organisers should perhaps have checked the lyrics before cueing the music.One of the first people, incidentally, to mock BJP’s ‘outreach plagiarism’, was student leader, Neha Bora who, immediately after her 23 day-long fast at Jantar Mantar youth protest travelled to Ranchi, Kolkata, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Chennai, Kozhikode, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar and other cities as part of AISA’s “Gen Z Rising” outreach to meet students and youth across the country.In a recent interview with The Quint, when asked about the BJP’s attempts to woo young people, she pointed out that that whatever reels the Prime Minister and other ministers were putting out were being turned into “meme content” by young people.The Modi government’s skill at renaming old UPA schemes is, of course, well known. To name just a few: Nirmal Bharat became Swachh Bharat; Indira Awaas became Pradhan Mantri Awaas; Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana became Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana; Swavalamban became Atal Pension Yojana; and the National Optical Fibre Network became BharatNet. It should come as no great surprise, thus, that the great ‘Modi-ian’ tradition of ‘copying and pasting’ is continuing with the BJP’s desperate attempts to reach out to Gen Z, but these are likely to come a-cropper because, as Neha Bora puts it, “They cannot, and do not, understand young people.” A government that is unable to come with creative and original solutions to the huge problems India is facing will also find itself lacking and creative and original ways of communicating with its youth. The more it tries to ape the younger leaders in the opposition, the more it will find itself the butt of jokes and ridicule.To paraphrase Bob Dylan’s immortal words, “Come BJP leaders all over the landAnd don’t criticize what you can’t understandGen Z and Alpha are beyond your commandYour old road is rapidly agingPlease get out of the new one if you can’t lend a handFor the times, they are a-changing.”Rohit Kumar is an educator. He can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com