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The flawed secularism vs the famous diversity of India

Dimple Kaul
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The flawed secularism vs the famous diversity of India

As a persecuted member of a minority community (Kashmiri Hindu) that is not even considered a minority and consequently, has never been taken cognisance of, by the chest-beating, human rights citing Liberals, when I see the state of MSM i.e. ‘media-sanctioned minorities’ in India, I wonder what are people even talking about!

Media sanctioned minorities are the ones that are considered as Minorities by the Mainstream Media, ignoring numerical reality. Am not kidding. How many times have you found Sikhs, Parsis or Jains finding any place of reckoning in their discourse?

Going by the perception created by the Media, only those people who belong to the religions marketed and propagated using the twin themes of love and peace, are the minorities in India.

Having lived in and traveled to places across India, it surprises me no end to witness the outcry of ‘intolerance’ and ‘minorities under siege’. Who is showing intolerance, to whom and how, pray tell me?

Don’t people from the ‘media-sanctioned minorities’ have the liberty to profess their faith at home and in their respective places of worship? Has anyone been ever stopped from praying in a manner of their choosing? Has anyone been asked to avoid wearing visible signs of their faith in public including workplace? No!

But! Wait.

Indian secularism doesn’t celebrate diversity of faiths, it celebrates victimhood of some particular faiths.

We have heard numerous complaints about loudspeakers during Hindu festivals, but one complaint against azaan, and all hell broke loose. We have instances of students being beaten/chastised for sporting a ‘tilak’ to school, but question ‘hijab’ at school and secularism is threatened.

People who believe in many Gods, who believe in all paths leading to the same destination and who believe in the whole world being one family are branded intolerant in the surreal ‘MSM meets MSM’ world, while those believing in “there is no God except…” become loving and peaceful.

People whose population share has been dwindling on account of foreign-funded proselytising piranhas are taken to task even if a handful of people do “Ghar Wapsi” while those who have declared a mission to convert everyone are celebrated as part of the diversity and acceptance.

The ‘cabbies and maids’ source based MSM would never know how it feels to be unable to pray where you grew up praying. To find that the Shiva Linga you bowed to as a child, was desecrated and submerged in the river on whose bank the temple stood. To be marked as a target for a Bindi or a Dejhor or a Janeyu. To be told that you had to convert, die or flee – all because of your faith!

Thus, it amuses me no end when the self-attested eminences preach Secularism to us from their pulpits. As a Hindu, I’d say that our Constitution mandates that the State be secular. As a Hindu, our Conscience mandates that our society be pluralistic.

Have the wilfully ignorant self-attested intellectuals ever pondered over the following?

  • Which faith(s) divide(s) people into believers and non-believers?
  • Which faith has offers and inducements similar to customer acquisition?
  • Which faith(s) aspire(s) to spread far and wide through means overt and covert?
  • Which religions came uninvited, used violence as a means, to turn non-believers into believers instead of focusing on inclusivity and pluralism?
  • Which faith creates low entry barriers and high exit barriers?
  • Which faiths seem to act more like Conglomerates with targets of customer acquisition and market expansion?

The answers are self-evident.

But which is the faith that gets to hear the maximum sermons about protecting secularism (a manifesto was also written) and professing tolerance? That answer is also self-evident.

As a proud Hindu, I look at all Indians as my family. It includes those believing in faiths of Indic origin and those following non-Indic faiths. I respect those whose ancestors have had to embrace the latter due to persuasion, persecution or proselytisation. They are my own and it pains me when I see perpetual victimhood being forced upon them by some self-attested eminences!

Painting regular crimes as minority persecution and covering up genuine religious persecution as disgruntlement benefits none. And unless we are aware of what ails us and accept it, how will we cure ourselves?

How can we ignore Hindus from Kashmir, Kairana, Kerala, Dhulagarh and many other places? Instead of acknowledging the problem, we are busy denying it.

These days everyone is talking about “gau rakshaks”. They are being compared with terrorists. But remember what these commentators did when a gau-rakshak was killed by cattle smugglers? They brought “political context” in the murder and tried to downplay it. As if there is no social or political context to the cow vigilantism incidents. There can’t be a more brazen and insensitive example of how some particular lives don’t matter for the flag-bearers of Indian secularism.

Despite such behaviour, Hindus in general have not complained. Perhaps, it is in this regard that we act like a typical Indian (Sanatani) family where the eldest child is expected to be virtues-incarnate while the younger siblings get away with anything! Mother India has been Nirupa Roy, for far too long, and the eldest child has been relentlessly upholding family values.

But in the 21st century of ‘isms’ galore, equality and oneness have to be The Truism.

‘Give a dog a bad name and hang him’ strategy of the past is passe! So let us stop ostriching our way out of duties.

All that ALL of us need to do is to learn and practice civility and civic duty so that tolerance and mutual-respect are a way of life for EVERYONE in India and not just Hindus.

We are Indians. We are one family. A family or a household functions smoothly only when when all chip in with their duties without fear or favour.

Let us, therefore, learn to live and let live in unity while celebrating our glorious diversity.

Interview of a Right-Wing woman, without misogynist notes of Manu Joseph

Yogini
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Interview of a Right-Wing woman, without misogynist notes of Manu Joseph

The mainstream media and so-called liberals have been mocking, sexualizing and abusing “right wing” women since around 2012 for being supporters of Narendra Modi. They have called Smriti Irani and Meenakshi Lekhi Modi’s cheergirls, ran petty polls deriding prominent right-wing women social media supporters, coined the term “hate hags”, which even the Congress spokeswoman was happy to endorse.

And after heaping all scorn, bile, and abuse, the same lot then goes on to talk about “trolls”.

For some reason, the women on the right-wing don’t play victim despite victimized very systematically. These brave women have stood up to these cheap tactics. They have on occasions even spoken up against the abuse, but largely they have believed in carrying on with their life and work while these real trolls surround them and try to scare them away.

Recently Hindustan Times started a “campaign” against trolls where they gave no platform to any right-wing woman to share their experience. If this was not enough, an enlightened journalist named Manu Joseph went ahead and wrote an article about right-wing women, where he poured all his sexual frustrations to demean and denigrate the same women who had put some trust in him and had decided to share their experiences. I hope Joseph is feeling manly now after releasing all his frustrations.

If you think I’m being unfair to Joseph, you have to look at his track record in writing about women. Many readers may be unaware of Anand Jon, a fashion designer who made it big in New York fashion industry. He has been sentenced to 59 years of imprisonment by the US courts for sexual abuse. Joseph wrote an article about Jon. Read what he writes:

There were many stories about him and he was linked to several girls. His world seemed to be very large then. A world filled with women. A world also called “the field”. As his male classmates now say, frequently, “He played the whole field.” Many years later some of those girls from the field would appear on Facebook, their faces somewhat bloated, mothers now, their husbands still in the dark about the times when Anand John touched them indecently.

There is no connection between Anand Jon being sentenced for a sexual crime versus the current looks of Jon’s female classmates. But Joseph feels the need to pull down these women and if no logical argument is available then by deriding looks of women with passage of time and life.

Not just Jon, the enlightened Manu Joseph had written an article about the erudite Tarun Tejpal, who was accused of rape by his junior colleague at Tehelka. The article was cleverly written to hint that the woman was lying and Tejpal could be innocent.

In retrospect, appears that Manu Joseph has some amount of ingrained misogyny that the women who agreed to talk to him couldn’t anticipate. And he extracted his “manly revenge” from them.

In his article on ‘women in the right-wing’, Joseph goes on to declare that “Most of the women drawn to the right started their adult lives with no strong political views but a crush on Narendra Modi and bitter personal experiences with some liberals seem to have tipped them.”

There is no context for the conclusion drawn that right-wing women have no strong political views. He presumes women can be only sexual beings with no intellect to develop logical arguments and opinions on law, financial policy, or any other governance issues. In the article, Joseph maligns and tries hard to show right-wing women as mumbling idiots with heightened sexual feelings for the Prime Minister.

One of those whom Joseph interviewed was Amrita Bhinder. I have briefly known Amrita in the last 2.5 years through Twitter. We both follow each other but have never met or had private communications with each other. I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to get a real interview that she was denied by Joseph.

The interview follows:

Amrita Bhinder
Amrita Bhinder

Q1. Do you regret having met Manu Joseph and agreeing to talk to him after the kind of article he has come up with?

Ans: I don’t regret talking to Manu. In fact, the way the article has turned out, it exposes the author’s mindset more than harming his subject’s image.

Q2. But this was betrayal I would argue. Will you be comfortable if someone from the mainstream media talks to you again?

Ans: You are right, but I will still talk to those calling themselves liberals if another of those approach me. I believe no space should be given up just for the fear of being misrepresented even when it’s a certainty. Every article cuts both ways. The subject as well as the author are at risk, and it is quite dependent on the readers understanding. And today readers are not that easy misled.

Q3. Coming to the content that was not coloured by Manu’s opinions, you had talked about your professional success and your triumph over medical issues. Can you tell us about your journey and evolution as a right-wing woman?

Ans: My journey into being a ‘right wing’ woman has a lot to do with the Prime Minister Modi, ever since he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. I am a firm believer that he is not personally culpable for the 2002 riots. It is a propaganda fed by the mainstream media to keep away a contender by inflicting fear and paranoia in folks. Under his watch, frequency of communal riots drastically dropped in Gujarat and law & order situation became better. His track record of development was also impressive and those made me his supporter.

At this point, I want to add that the tag of “Right Wing” is misnomer for me, because I’m a socialist and not a religious zealot. This categorization by media into Left & Right is a travesty. Those who claim they are left & liberal stand at odds with the definition of the term. The left-liberals in fact are the ‘elite’ in India and they are the high priests of the state.

But if being against them and being a supporter of Narendra Modi makes me a right-wing, be it.

Q4: Would you say you support right-wing because of Narendra Modi only? Is your support person specific or party specific or ideology specific?

Ans: My support obviously is for the Prime Minister. However, I also believe that BJP has always put the Armed Forces and the nation first, which other parties have not always done. So yes, even ideologically I’m inclined towards BJP, especially under Narendra Modi who gave a call for “India First”.

Q5. Were you a politically aware person since young age or it has been a recent development?

Ans: As I was growing up, my family did not discuss politics at home, for I come from an army background and normally we were kept away from the political space in discussion or on the dining table. But that’s not to say that one did not understand the role the then government played post 1971 war in downgrading the pay bands of the army in comparison to the civil services. To me, it seemed like a humiliating thing to do the nation’s forces that had just won a bloody war. And I started getting interested in politics as a result.

Q6. Are there any laws or governance aspects of the current government that you disagree with? Have you been vocal in your opposition to it? As a legal professional are there any suggestions on policy which BJP led government can easily adopt to bring major changes to governance and society?

Ans: On the fiscal front, I have some issues with the budget. To my mind, the exemption limit should’ve been raised to 5 lakhs, instead of bringing down the rate to 5% for 2.5 to 5 lakhs bracket.  Post demonetization, many have come into the banking system and anything above 2.5 Lakhs would even cover even low paying blue-collar jobs or manual labor earning 30,000 a month in the cities. It is not worth the effort of tracking and compliance both for the government and people earning below 5 lakhs a year.

On the internal security front, the present government needs to empower the forces with modern equipment, decision making powers, and autonomy to strongly take on stone pelters, Jihadis, separatists, Naxals, Maoist et al. The government should show some political will on the internal security front.

Another issue that requires redressal is the ISI propaganda in India’s mainstream media. Indian Govt needs to take steps to fight propaganda shrewdly so as not let the narrative be led/defined by Pakistan. We must move away from reactionary problem solving. Move towards proactive counter psyops. So that Indian’s learn to think independently. Right now, Pakistan is winning on the propaganda front.

I have been very vocal about my opposition to some of the stands the government has taken, be it the delay in OROP or on the budgets proposals and all the rising casualty figures of our armed and security forces.

Q7. Have you faced flak from friends and family for being a vocal right wing woman supporter?

Ans: Yes, I have faced a lot of flak for being a supporter of the Prime Minister. A lot of my friends, many of whom believe that they are ‘liberal’ and open to other people’s views, have accused me of being radical just because of my support for Narendra Modi. The last thing I am is a radical or a religious person. In fact, I believe that religion is a private matter and cannot be a focus area for the nation’s policy. Economics, security, health should be vital areas for focus, not religion. That is why I am very surprised when I find liberals not speak about the social schemes available to the poor from Jan Dhan to the Social Security schemes, life insurances & low cost housing, electricity for all, LPG, and some such totally ignored for keeping the talks around only religion.

Q8. Do you feel women choose to support right-wing for reasons that are very different from a man’s perspective? Are there any particular issues that are more important to women than men?

Ans: I have a very general gender neutral take on supporting the Prime Minister or BJP. I think people of all classes, religion and gender support him for the hope and governance he has brought into India. Though on the issues such as triple talaq and bringing in Uniform Civil Code, there could be gender related support, but even there I see no reason why men shouldn’t support.

Endnote:

There are many right-wing women including yours truly, whose support for the Prime Minister and by that virtue the party, comes from a strong ideological pinning of Indic culture and values. Women from various parts of the country like @Unsubtledesi (Nupur), @Kuvalayamala (Anjali Geroge), Dimple Kaul and countless others are giving a large part of their free time to various Indic movements through their writings and activism work.  These women have no personal stakes or expectations from the government. To continuously deride such women reflects very poorly on the media and “Liberals”.

RSS office in Kerala vandalized a day after its inauguration by alleged CPM goons

OpIndia Staff
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RSS office in Kerala vandalized a day after its inauguration by alleged CPM goons

An RSS office in Perunthattil village falling under Kannur district in Kerala was reportedly vandalized by 10 goons on Monday morning. The goons smashed the windows, destroyed the equipment in the premises and also threatened women and children who were present inside.

Incidentally this vandalism comes only a day after the office was inaugurated. Following this attack, both the RSS and the BJP have placed the blame on CPM activists.

This has prompted Rajiv Tuli the Prant Prachar Pramukh of Delhi to issue a press release which put forth the RSS’s side to the whole incident.

The release claimed that in Perunthattil where the office or Keshav Smriti Sevalay is located is a CPM stronghold where no other organisations are allowed to undertake any political-cultural activity.

The office was inaugurated on Sunday

The Sevalay consisted of a help-desk, employment cell, library among others. The release also claimed that it was attacked a whopping 18 times since its foundation stone was laid. The attacks included removing the foundation stone, filling the excavated are and demolition of walls. The construction was finally completed by the Swayamsevaks with the help of local villagers who risked their lives.

The release further claimed that a day before the inauguration a prominent RSS member was surrounded by armed CPM workers and barely managed to save himself.

The release also claimed that posters were put out in the village which read “Welcome to CPM party village/This is an RSS-free zone/Here RSS is banned”. It also reiterated that violence especially in Kannur district has hugely intensified after the CPM-led LDF government came to power in 2016.

Here are a few images of the vandalized office as reported here[1][2]:

This above case might just be another instance of RSS establishments getting targeted by alleged CPM goons. We had previously reported an interview of an RSS leader wherein he had elaborated how the lives of RSS workers were at a risk in Kerala. Incidentally this plight of the RSS members has gone largely unheard by both the media and the BJP government at the center.

Amit Shah’s master-plan for BJP’s Mission 2019

Saswat Panigrahi
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Amit Shah’s master-plan for BJP’s Mission 2019

Sangathan (organisation), Sangharsh (fight for the cause) and Samrachana (cohesiveness) – these are the three directional principles of the cadre-based Bharatiya Janata Party. Amit Shah, the master strategist, knows all too well how to carry them forward. His astute poll management has yielded results for the BJP in successive elections.

Presently the party rules 16 of 29 states, covering 70 per cent of India’s geographical area and 60 per cent of the population. But like Robert Frost’s poem, Amit Shah wants the BJP miles to go. That is precisely the reason, during his presidential address in the recently concluded National Executive Meet in Bhubaneswar, Shah had declared that the golden age of the BJP would dawn when the party would occupy every level of legislature – from Panchayat to Parliament.

Leading from the front, the BJP president is currently on a marathon 110-day-long whirlwind tour across the nation. The tour coincides with the Modi government’s celebration of three years in office. Shah’s voyage, which started on 25 April, will end on 25 September, the 101st birth anniversary of party ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay.

Amit Shah’s tour across the nation will focus on taking stock of the party’s organisational strength, further expansion of ideology and electoral appeal.

So far, the BJP president has covered two states – West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir. In West Bengal, Shah has given the clarion call to party workers for Ebar Bangla (Now Bengal) to “liberate” the state from Mamata Banerjee’s misrule and recreate a Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal). At Jammu, Amit Shah has urged the party workers to spread and strengthen the spirit of nationalism in Kashmir.

Mission 2019 

The BJP president has already prepared a blue print for the party’s big win in the 2019 general elections. Amit Shah wants the victory should be bigger than that of the 2014. In the 2014 general elections, the BJP won 282 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats on its own. This time, Shah has set a target of winning 400+ seats. Apart from retaining every Lok Sabha seat the party won in 2014, the BJP president has identified 120 winnable seats where the party had lost in the last Lok Sabha elections. During the course of his nation-wide tour, Shah himself is seeking special feedback on these 120 Lok Sabha constituencies.

The Master Plan

For the purpose of election strategy, Amit Shah has earmarked all the 29 states and seven union territories into three categories – A, B and C – in accordance with their electoral significance. The BJP president is spending three days in category-A states, two days in category-B states and one day in category-C states. The category-C states are those being ruled by the BJP. The category-A states are those where the party had failed to win in 2014 Lok Sabha elections despite a groundswell of Modi wave and now, Shah senses the potential for a turnaround in 2019. There are four states in special focus in BJP’s scheme of things – West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana and Kerala. These four states contribute a total of 102 Lok Sabha seats.

In West Bengal, there are a galaxy of issues – Saradha chit fund scam, Narada sting, communal appeasement and anti-Hindu politics – plaguing the state. The BJP is going to use them as its trump card to checkmate Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in 2019. In Odisha, Naveen Patnaik is staring at a strong anti-incumbency. In the last Pachayat elections, the BJP succeeded in making a giant stride in Odisha politics, leaving Patnaik’s BJD in a tailspin. With renewed hope and new vigour, the BJP is sanguine about riding a saffron surge in the land of Shree Jagannath. Similarly, the party wants to paint the Red bastion Kerala – where party workers and RSS swayamsevaks are repeatedly being targeted by the ruling CPM cadre – in saffron. In Telangana, the BJP is getting ready to contest the 2019 elections on its own.

Micro Management

The brief from Amit Shah to party’s organisation is clear: The preparation for 2019 elections has to be micromanaged. During the course of the ‘intensive outreach campaign’, the party will take the success story of Narendra Modi government to the people.

For the booth-level strengthening exercise in the run up to the 2019 elections, the BJP has already roped in around 3.52 lakh volunteers who would work full-time for the party for anywhere between 15 days and a year. Moreover, the party is also reaching out to its 11 crore primary members enrolled during the massive membership drive in 2015-16 and will involve them in booth-level activities.

Further, the party has enrolled another 600 full-timers. Of these 600 full timers, 543 will be assigned one Lok Sabha seat and are tasked to supervise strengthening of the party and creating a winnable environment in 2019 elections.  The remaining 57 will be tasked with overall electoral responsibility of a cluster of five constituencies each where the party has traditionally been week.

Pakistan Army mutilates bodies of 2 soldiers, Indian army vows ‘appropriate response’

OpIndia Staff
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Pakistan Army mutilates bodies of 2 soldiers, Indian army vows ‘appropriate response’

It was today revealed by the Northern Command, Indian Army, that in a cowardly act, the Pakistan Army had mutilated the dead body of 2 martyred Indian soldiers. The incident was said to take place today, i.e. on 1st May 2017, in the Krishna Ghati sector. News of this dastardly act was broken on social media by the Northern Command, Indian Army’s official twitter account.

A short press release was tweeted out by the army elaborating the sequence of events:


As specified in the release, Paksitan is said to have carried out unprovoked rocket and mortar firing on Indian posts. This happened along the line of control in the Krishna Ghati sector. The release further stated that, simultaneously, a BAT action was launched on  a patrol  operating between  the two posts.

This is not the first time Pakistan had resorted to such unsoldierly conduct. In November last year, an Indian soldier was beheaded in Kashmir and two others killed by Pakistani commandos who crossed the Line of Control at Machil. Just three weeks before that, Sepoy Mandeep Singh was beheaded not far from the spot.

Back then too, the Indian army had promised “heavy retribution” for this event. It was reported that within hours of the above incident, the army launched an aggressive counter offensive on Pakistan. Brigadier, Northern Command, S Gotra had said tha India Army launched a counter offensive along the LoC. Indian Army posts are responding strongly and giving a befitting reply, Defence PRO Manish Mehta said.

On the very next day, news broke out that Pakistan had admitted that it lost three Army personnel, including a Captain after the Indian Army launched a fire assault against Pakistani posts at different points along the LoC. Some similar action can be expected this time too by the army, especially since they have promised an ‘appropriate response’.

Swedish embassy cancels event involving abusive journalist after social media protests

OpIndia Staff
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Swedish embassy cancels event involving abusive journalist after social media protests

On Sunday, many people on Twitter expressed anger and disappointment with Embassy of Sweden in India and Maneka Gandhi, the Union Cabinet Minister for Women and Child Development, for organising and attending an event respectively that linked “Press Freedom” with “Online Trolling”.

Following is the poster of the event that attracted this anger:

There were two main reasons why people were angry:

  1. Journalists, especially in India, often try to curb criticism by labeling anyone who disagrees with them as “troll” and this event was seen as giving legitimacy to that view by linking “press freedom” to “trolling”.
  2. One of the guests invited – a person named Swati Chaturvedi – is an abusive writer known for targeting BJP leaders and supporters through her fictitious writing. Presence of a BJP minister with such a person raised eyebrows.

Presence of Barkha Dutt, another controversial journalist alleged to be anti-BJP, was also one of the reasons some BJP supporters wanted Maneka Gandhi to not attend this event. People didn’t hide their anger against Maneka Gandhi and the BJP for gracing such an event:


Some users also called for the sacking of Maneka Gandhi by using the #sackmaneka hashtag:


Although many people thought that this was another Twitter outrage that will die down with time, earlier today it was revealed that the Embassy of Sweden had cancelled the event:


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOpIndia.com called up the Embassy of Sweden and we were informed that the event indeed has been called off. When we asked for official reason, we were told that there were “conflicts of schedule”.

However, the embassy confirmed that the event has been cancelled and not postponed. “An event on similar lines might be organised in future, but as of now, this event is cancelled,” an embassy official confirmed.

Boy gets education loan after writing to PM, bank had rejected due to father’s credit rating

OpIndia Staff
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Boy gets education loan after writing to PM, bank had rejected due to father’s credit rating

During the global recession years of 2008-2009, Mr. S Thakur, an executive with an IT company in Gurgaon was finding it difficult to maintain his finances and support his family. He had to take a salary cut to save his job and ended up defaulting on a couple of credit card payments, which damaged his CIBIL rating.

Things became normal in coming years, but little did Mr. Thakur know that his credit card defaults could prove to be a stumbling block in the study plans of his younger son Sumit 8 years later. Sumit had completed his B. Com course from Kolkata in 2014 and was working in a local company and preparing for higher education at the same time. He wanted to get an MBA degree.

On 18th March this year, Sumit got an admission offer from Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Hyderabad to pursue the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) course, which is akin to getting an MBA degree. IMT on its website had suggested Punjab National Bank (PNB) as one of the banks to go for education loan. PNB’s website also listed IMT as an institute for which they do provide education loans.

24-year-old Sumit secured provision admission at IMT Hyderabad after paying the required 50,000 rupees and applied for an education loan of 12.6 lakh rupees at PNB in Kolkata on 24th March, so that he is able to pay the first installment of the course fee by 15th April. He thought that a nationalized bank will easily sanction the loan for an approved institute and course.

However, till 6th April, PNB didn’t sanction him the loan. He was getting worried and asked the bank officials the reason. His father’s poor credit history was one of the reasons why the bank refused to give him a loan, Sumit told OpIndia.com

Sumit tried to argue that the reputation of the college and the course where he was seeking admission to, and his own academic background should be the factors behind sectioning the loan, not his father’s financial history, but that didn’t help. Sumit didn’t know what to do next.

Around the same time, Sumit had read about an incident where a Muslim girl from Karnataka wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had got her education loan sanctioned. The girl had reportedly referred to Prime Minister’s ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ scheme in her letter.

Though he didn’t exactly fit in the ‘Beti Padhao’ scheme, Sumit tried to test his luck. He googled how can one write to Prime Minister’s Office and discovered the website enabling grievance redressal by the Government of India.

He wrote about his plight on the above website and addressed it to the Prime Minister’s Office on 7th April. Meanwhile IMT had extended the last date of submission of first installment of the fees from 15th April to 29th April. Sumit decided to wait for a couple of weeks, and if no help comes, he’d have to forget his MBA plans and ask IMT to refund his 50,000 rupees.

On 20th April – little less than a couple of weeks since he wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office – Sumit received a call from the PNB officials who told him that his education loan will be sanctioned. The officials told him that they had received communication from higher ups inquiring about the incident.

A happy and a little confused Sumit then logged onto the aforementioned website to discover that the Prime Minister’s Office had forwarded his complaint to the PNB’s Kolkata Circle Office on 19th April i.e. just the previous day.

Sumit thanked the officials (and his stars) and he told the bank officials that there was nothing to worry about as there was no demand by him for any punitive action and that this was just a centralized grievance redressal system at work. His motive of using the grievance redressal system was to get clarity on the education loan process, not to extract some penalty from the bank or any employee.

Education loan letter to Sumit Thakur
The loan sanction letter by the PNB to Sumit Thakur

The first installment of the fees has now been submitted to IMT Hyderabad and Sumit is now all set to pursue his dreams of higher education starting next month. He and his family are happy to have experienced this grievance redressal first hand.

“Previously people would think thrice before even approaching their local councillor for any help. And now you can write straightaway to the PMO and get help sitting in your room. If this isn’t good governance, then I don’t know what is!” Sumit’s father told OpIndia.com reacting to the whole development.

Another ISIS terrorist from India killed, this time in Afghanistan

OpIndia Staff
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Another ISIS terrorist from India killed, this time in Afghanistan

A 30 year old man from Kerala who was believed to have joined ISIS was reportedly killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan. The man named Bexin Vincent was a convert from Christianity and had married a girl called Nimisha. They both had slipped out of India when she was pregnant.

This piece of information was reportedly conveyed to his family which lives in Kasargod, North Kerala via the messaging app named Telegram on Saturday. The sender of the message is believed to be a youth named Ashfaq Majeed, who along with at least 19 others, had reportedly joined the Islamic State last year.

This news is in line with various reports which over time have shed light over the possible fate which has befallen the Indian citizens who have joined ISIS.

  • It was reported in March that a 24 year old man called Hafeezuiddin who hailed from the same place of Kasargod was killed in a similar drone strike in Afganisthan. His death was also conveyed to his family using the Telegram messaging app.
  • About 20 ISIS recruits from India were reportedly killed when the USA dropped the ‘Mother of all bombs’ in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan on 13th April.
  • In November, 2016 it was reported that a 22-year-old youth from Kalyan named Aman Naeem Tandel who had left for Syria in 2014 was killed.
  • It was reported in April, 2015 that three ISIS fighters including one named Abdul Rahman from Maharashtra had so far died fighting in Syria. In November of that year, the Indian security agencies released the names of 6 Indian youths who had died after joining the ISIS.

Apart from getting killed there have also been cases about the fighters returning back to India after they were reportedly ‘disillusioned’ by the Islamic State:

  • Arif Majeed an engineering student who had joined the Islamic state in May, 2014 returned back to the country in November of the same year as he was completely ignored and had to clean toilets and fetch water for fellow terrorists.
  • A youth named Subahani Haja Moideen too returned to India in October 2016, five months after joining the terror group as he was reportedly disillusioned by the senseless violence the group was perpetrating.

Journalists or donkeys? When media thought potholes and donkeys are same thing

OpIndia Staff
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Journalists or donkeys? When media thought potholes and donkeys are same thing

Uttar Pradesh is famous and infamous for many things, but donkeys are hardly one of those, at least in literal sense. Except for the former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s election speech about “Gujarat Ke Gadhe” where he referred to a tourism ad about Wild Asses of Gujarat by Amitabh Bachchan, you can hardly think of something that links Uttar Pradesh and donkeys in recent past.

But if the Indian mainstream media is to be believed, donkeys roaming on roads are one the of the biggest challenges in the biggest state of India. Sample these headlines from the mainstream media outlets that found their way into Google News today:

fake news about Yogi Adityanath
Indian mainstream media reporting fake news

As per these media reports, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath has promised to make Uttar Pradesh roads donkey-free. Times of India was one of the earliest to report the same. They claimed that Yogi Adityanath said the following:

“UP came to be known as the place where donkeys crowd the streets and where it was completely dark after nightfall. We have now decided to ensure that by 15 June, UP’s streets are donkey-free.”

The report quoted news agency ANI as the source. But did ANI really report so?

Since the average reader these days is more aware, alert, and knowledgeable than an average journalist, very soon people found what ANI had actually reported:


So Yogi Adityanath meant potholes! This is what he actually said:

“UP came to known as the place from where potholes in roads start and where it was completely dark after nightfall.”

And then he went ahead to announce that by 15th June, potholes will be removed and electricity will be provided for 24 hours in district headquarters.

But for our journalists, he was apparently talking about donkeys (gadha) not potholes (gaddha). A person with basic knowledge of Hindi or a basic level of context could have understood what was being talked about, but not the media that confidently went out to report that Uttar Pradesh roads were to be made donkey-free!

Here was a Chief Minister who was promising something with a deadline, but the media thought he was cracking some joke. The original culprit it seems was the Times of India, after which other media organisations blindly copied their report adding their own take. People on Twitter slammed Times of India for this shoddy journalism:

Times of India deleted their report after this embarrassing incident, though other reports are still live (at the time of writing this report).

This incident also shows the perils of ‘chain news’ reporting by our media, where just one mainstream media outlet has to err (or lie deliberately) and that fake news will be repeated by other media organisations to an extent that people start believing the fake news as real incident. Just that this time it was too bray-zen.

While this incident is funny and we can discard it with a few laughs, do note that it demonstrates how dangerous media incompetence is. Thanks to this blind chain reporting by the mainstream media, a deliberate lie can also be circulated and people made to believe in something that never happened, as we had earlier seen in the case of EVM controversy in Bhind in Madhya Pradesh.

A touching gesture – IAS officers to adopt families of martyred soldiers

OpIndia Staff
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A touching gesture – IAS officers to adopt families of martyred soldiers

At a time when the nation is mourning over the death of 25 CRPF personnel, killed in a Maoist ambush in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, a very touching gesture has come from the IAS Officers Association.

In a unique initiative, the country’s elite administrative service officers will adopt families of the martyred soldiers of the defence forces and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF). This is a first of its kind move from the IAS Officers Association. The association represents all members of Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

The official twitter handle of IAS Officers Association tweeted:

“It would be in the national interest that the civil servants proactively contribute in this endeavour,” Indian Civil and Administrative Service (Central) Association said in a statement.

“It is proposed that each member of the Indian Administrative Service adopts one family of a martyred soldier. The family may preferably from the state to which the officer belongs and will be serving for a large part of his or her career. It would be appropriate that the IAS officers adopt one family of a martyred soldier in their first place of posting as Subdivision magistrate,” the association said.

“Senior officers, or those from state civil services, can also adopt such families voluntarily,” it said.

The associations have further asked the officers to provide support and assistance to the families of the martyred soldiers in the following ways:

  • Oversee and ensure that all dues of the martyred soldiers be paid to the dependents.
  • Ensure that the children of the martyred soldier continue getting good education.
  • Mentor and guide the children of martyred soldiers so that they can pursue their career of their choice.
  • Provided benefits to the martyred families from various schemes being run by the government – Skill India, Start-up India, Digital India etc.
  • Provide adequate medical help when any member of the martyred family is seriously ill or injured.

“We are requesting state governments and the central government to issue the necessary instructions in this regard to all concerned so that this arrangement gets institutionalised at the earliest,” the IAS Officers Associations said.

Earlier, cricketer Gautam Gambhir had pledged to bear all the education related expenses of the children of the 25 CRPF jawans martyred in Sukma.

According to available data, the death toll of the Army soldiers stood at 64 in 2016. In the same year, 65 security personnel were killed by Maoists. This year so far, 54 security personnel have been killed in Maoist ambush.

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