February 22, 2025

With “mitron,” the preferred word of endearment used by Prime Minister Modi to address the countrymen and women in his speeches, becoming the subject of several memes and twitter comments (most of them disparaging) post his demonetization speech, Modi chose to give the word a go-by in his December 31 speech . Not once did the prime minister utter the word in the 43 minute long speech. Instead, he replaced it with “doston.”

Post demonetization, people had started saying that they had got scared of hearing the word mitron, lest some more bombs were dropped on them. One twitter user going by the name HJ tweeted “I will instantly unfriend my friend, if he address (sic) me as #Mitron !!” Sir Ravindra Jadeja posted this cartoon that succinctly showed how people had started to fear “mitron.”

Hence, people are talking about how the replacement of mitron with doston worked wonders. Using doston, the prime minister steered clear of more bombs. He just warned the corrupt and the tax evaders that the government was after them and they would have no place to hide. But he said nothing to further scare his mitrs and dosts.

In fact, he showered a lot of New Year gifts on his dosts in the form of sops designed to ease the demonetization pains. People are talking about how the prime minister was not his usual self while delivering the speech. They are saying that perhaps the pain of not being able to use mitron was showing on his face, which was almost sad. He was missing mitron and doston, people say, was a poor replacement.

People are also talking about the choice of words in a different way. They are saying that when Modi uses mitron, be prepared for something bad and when he uses doston, expect sops. They are praying for a selective memory loss for the PM so that he forgets mitron and keeps giving out sops.