Gandhi, however, argued that the earlier internship plan had ended in embarrassment. “What’s the truth? In response to my question in Parliament, the government admitted — less than 10,000 internships. The stipend so low that 90 per cent of youth refused it,” he wrote.

The 2024 internship programme — officially the ‘Prime Minister Internship Scheme’ — had been positioned as a cornerstone of youth empowerment, with a Rs 2,000 crore budget allocation and glowing government press releases. But according to replies tabled in Parliament, actual uptake was tiny, prompting Opposition claims that the numbers had been wildly inflated for political effect.

Modi, undeterred, packaged the Rozgar Yojana with other big-ticket initiatives in his Independence Day address, including defence manufacturing, rural housing, and clean energy expansion. He said these programmes would create opportunities, drive economic growth, and secure India’s future as a developed nation.

Gandhi was unconvinced: “Modi ji has no new ideas left. From this government, the youth will get not jobs, but only rhetoric.”

That scepticism taps into a broader concern among critics — that mega-figures and headline-friendly acronyms are announced with great flourish, only to fade away quietly when targets are missed. The risk for Modi’s new Rs 1 lakh crore promise is that it might join the last one in the archives of unmet ambitions — or as Gandhi might put it, in the back catalogue of rhetoric.