In our previous article on the Corporate Espionage case, OpIndia.com team mentioned the chain of events through which the Government trapped the moles inside ministries. To most, it is pretty clear that the Government has done a good job in nabbing such criminals who were profiteering by stealing sensitive documents. But, as usual, there are some among us, who refuse to give this Government credit, even where it is due. There are multiple reasons for this, but first let us look at the reactions.
Vrinda Gopinath, in Outlook magazine has written a piece called “Chasing The Wrong Story”, in which she has slandered the seriousness by calling it a ‘Hysterical Reporting by Incompetent and Ignorant Media’. She also raises a serious question, asking whether “the Modi Government faking a mammoth expose to send a message to the people that he’s tough on his corporate friends”. One would believe, this deep sense of distrust towards a “Modi Government” stems from the inherent anti-Modi stance most of media has, but there is another angle to it.
She concludes her piece saying, “And since when has anyone been arrested for buying stolen goods? Journalist Saikia has only bought the official papers for his website, he must be released immediately.” And there is lies the motive behind her piece. This deep love and affection for a fellow journalist, has prompted her to deem the entire operation as a sham. And it is for this reason, we believe, it will be hard for any media publication to be objective in reporting this, because they can never concede that some of them are rotten to the core.
The blog Scroll.in decided to give it another kooky spin. It quoted a Times of India report which claimed NSA Ajit Doval was behind this operation, and gave it a spin that India should be less worried about leaks and must be more worried because NSA was involved. The blog says it is beyond the purview of the NSA to be involved in such matters, and he should restrict himself to “overseeing the defence of India from external and internal threats“. This is much like saying “oh a DIG caught some murderers? The Sub-Inspector should have caught them!” And conveniently ignoring that murders took place.
The blog also states that the NSA should not be involved, because the leaks do not “constitute a threat to national security”. It is indeed amazing how a person with a laptop has already deduced that this matter has nothing to do with National Security, thereby giving a semi-clean chit to those involved (including their colleagues). This reminds us of the time Praveen Swami tried to downplay the #TerrorBoat incident saying they are just “smugglers”. Such false assumptions go a long way in fixing the narrative. We wonder if the people at scroll.in have any dues to any corporates who could be involved in this.
When the espionage news was broken, Arvind Kejriwal congratulated Delhi Police. This although Delhi Police only played a role in finally executing the crackdown, but the entire trap was set up by Kejriwal’s political rivals.
Compliments del police 4 bursting espionage rkt. During interogations, police shud try to reach top people, who wud benefit from leaked info
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) February 21, 2015
However, think tanks of AAP didn’t leave a chance to opportunistically claim the credit. Rupa Subramanya tweeted:
AAP’s former advisor (no disclosure) @paranjoygt implies fear of AAP reason BJP cracking down on #CorporateEspionagehttp://t.co/9dsBBlU4I0
— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) February 21, 2015
The article mentioned in her tweet doesn’t write a single word of appreciation for the police, in fact it criticizes the event as a plot by the government to convey an impression that they are not overly supportive of the corporate conglomerate headed by the richest man in India, Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani. The former AAP media advisor also states that all this has been done by Modi only to avoid public criticism from his deity Arvind Kejriwal, that BJP is soft on corporates. It is indeed stunning that some people cannot even dream positively about Modi.
Another amazing reaction came from another AAP leader, Saurabh Bhardwaj, on a news debate on ABP news. He claimed that BJP was actually selling such classified information to corporates. And since such saleable material was stolen without the price being paid, BJP was furious and had hence caught such thugs who stole their merchandise!. We would advise Shri Bhardwaj to take up writing fiction as a full time hobby!
The direction of all this is clear: to discredit the Government in this. What differs are the motives. While some journalists will call it a sham operation, to protect their journalist friends, some others will try to give a clean chit to the corporates to whom they owe their allegiance. Political leaders like Kejriwal will find it hard to admit that Modi, an “Ambani Agent” is going after an “Ambani Agent” and hence will give it some other spin. While AAP sympathisers like Thakurta will give credit to AAP for invoking fear in Modi’s mind. And then, all these will be united by their single-minded hate for Modi.
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