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Appointment of the Army Chief – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

rohitagarwal
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Appointment of the Army Chief – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Amidst speculation and heated debates about the delay in appointment of the next Army Chief, rumours about the two senior army commanders likely to be superseded are doing rounds. One argument being forwarded is – “shouldn’t merit rather than seniority be the criterion?” As arguments go, it is a tempting one, one which is difficult to disagree with. But it’s not without its pitfalls.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that there is significant difference between Army Commanders in terms of their merit or suitability for the job. What would be the parameters on which such differences could be measured? How would the performance of a Northern Army Commander dealing with Counter Insurgency operations be compared with that of, say the Western Army Commander who’s peacetime deliverables would be substantially different? Or with the Vice Chief, who may have nothing to show but procurement projects which are delayed for no fault of his?

Since there is no objective mechanism to ascertain any differences in merit, even if they do exist, there is bound to be subjectivity in making such a choice. Even this may work without causing much of an upheaval as long as there is a strong government in place. But imagine this scenario sometime in the future.

Say there is a weak coalition government in place at the centre. There are three or four regional satraps jointly keeping the government afloat, each with just enough MPs to bring the government down if it comes to a crunch. And you have seven Army Commanders, each of whom is now in the running for the Army Chief post based on precedence set by selecting a chief ‘on merit’ rather than on seniority as used to happen earlier. Imagine if each of them is lobbying with one or more of the regional satraps to help them. You will have a situation where politicians are rooting for their ‘candidate’ to be the next Army Chief. Regional, cast and religious affiliations would come into play.

We recently saw the CM of a state creating a huge controversy over a routine army exercise. In future such controversies could become a way of ‘eliminating’ a candidate in the race for chief. Matter would be further complicated by the central government rooting for its own candidate, advised by the incumbent chief, probably based on Regimental or arm affiliations. Further unfolding and ramifications of such a scenario are actually too disturbing to imagine.

For the past seven decades, the Armed Forces have carried out their role professionally, having earned universal trust and respect in the country. They have remained steadfastly apolitical, and though appointment of the chiefs have been a political decision, there has been no politics involved in the decision itself. This is because the principle of senior most army commander becoming the chief has been strictly followed, leaving the government of the day very little room for playing favourites.

When the system has worked well for the past seven decades, there shouldn’t be any reason to tamper with it unnecessarily. Even if well intentioned, a move which is presently unnecessary and potential damaging in the long run, must be avoided at all costs. So, Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere or as the Americans, now our ‘major defence partners’ say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

(Author is an ex army-man; the article first appeared on author’s blog)

E-mails of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar hacked, NDTV approaches courts

OpIndia Staff
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E-mails of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar hacked, NDTV approaches courts

Late last night on Saturday, the Twitter account of controversial NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt appeared hacked. Tweets were posted by the same group – calling itself “Legion” – that had earlier claimed to hack Twitter accounts of Rahul Gandhi and Vijay Mallya.

The involvement of the same group was confirmed as the modus operandi of the hackers was the same i.e. first crack and hack the email systems and then use the emails to reset password of the associated Twitter account.

An employee of Twitter confirmed that the Twitter accounts were hacked as the users like Rahul Gandhi, Vijay Mallya and now Barkha Dutt were not using the two-step authentication process, which would have made access to a mobile phone compulsory, apart from the password, for logging into Twitter:


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The above was confirmed when the Twitter account of anther NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar was hacked a couple of hours after hacking of Barkha Dutt’s account. It appears that both Barkha and Ravish were using their official NDTV emails to log into Twitter, which allowed the hackers to reset their passwords after hacking into the email accounts.

So essentially this was another email hack, even though it’s the hacking of Twitter accounts that have made all the news in the past two weeks.

While the emails of Congress were not leaked – the hackers claim that they will leak those in the new year – email archive files of Vijay Mallya and Barkha Dutt were leaked by the hackers. Though there was one difference – in case of Mallya, hackers put selective information from the email files on the hacked Twitter page, no such selective emails were released by the hackers on the hacked Twitter pages of either Barkha Dutt or Ravish Kumar.

As we had pointed out in our earlier report, those leaks from Mallya’s emails contained private and confidential information about his business deals and properties, while the exact nature of email leaks of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar is yet not known.

However, it does appear that there is some sensitive and confidential information, perhaps damaging too, contained in those emails as NDTV declared that they will be approaching courts to stop these emails from being accessed by the public:


This is similar to what Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh had done around ten years ago when his phone conversation with some personalities were reportedly recorded and in the process of being leaked. He approached courts and made sure that no media organisation carried those tapes.

Many personalities, such as Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan had then argued that the tapes should be released as they could throw light on misuse of public offices.

One can similarly argue that the emails of these top journalists should also be released if they throw light on some politician-media nexus or some other wrongdoings by public figures. In fact, similar arguments were put forward when Radia tapes were released – incidentally Barkha Dutt was involved there too – and privacy concerns were put on the backburner as the information contained in the tapes hinted at corruption and nexus between corporate houses, politicians and media.

However, this time most of the talking heads are arguing that the email hacks are against privacy, which of course it is, just like any phone tapping or sting operation. Not just against privacy, email hacking is a cyber crime, and we at OpIndia.com are not endorsing that.

We leave upon the readers to conclude whether the arguments of various people are consistent over years vis a vis incidents of similar nature.

Meanwhile a few people on Twitter are making a few claims based on the leaked email archive files of Barkha and Ravish, but we are not carrying those.

And on expected lines, many in the media, abetted by Congress and AAP leaders and supporters, are again making this breach of email security an issue about reliability of digital transactions and cashless economy.

THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse

Gaurav
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THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse

The past one month has seen people discuss the impact of demonetisation threadbare. Right from the positives, to the negatives to the fake rumours, all have been debated in media and social media. The latest thing catching the eye of the public are the frequent reports of major raids in some or the other part of the country where-in huge stashes of gold, old demonetised cash, or new currency have been seized by the tax authorities.

The country-wide total of seizures till date is staggering:

Update: As a benchmark, one can see the figures of assets seized in raids in earlier periods. For example, as per this report, the first seven months of 2015 saw Income Tax raids seize assets worth about Rs 102.50 crores. The same figure for the same seven months of 2016 was about Rs 330 crores. We are just 4 weeks into demonetisation, and the raids have started just 2-3 weeks back. In this short span, the value of assets seized has easily surpassed the 7-months figure of 2015 and is all set to overtake even the 7-months figure of 2016.

What explains this sudden spurt in successful raids? How are the authorities getting information about such huge hoards of cash? Is it due to the rumoured “GPS chip” in the new Rs 2000 notes?

The most likely reasons are these:

Firstly, the tax authorities are liasoning with various other intelligence authorities like CBI etc.  Such swoops based on the information available only to the tax department are not so common. This kind of targeted attacking works best when information is shared among various agencies.

Secondly, there has to be a clear-cut instruction from above. And it has to come from the very top, i.e. the Prime Minister, flowing to the Finance Minister, and then all the agencies. The instruction is most probably to aggressively chase such money launderers. It is even possible that the IT sleuths have been given targets, failing which they are answerable to their higher-ups.

Thirdly, there is one key feature regarding demonetisation which ensures that information flows rather easily: Whether you are getting rid of old notes or getting new notes, you eventually have to go to a bank. Sure, you might unload your old wealth with some other launderer but the final point in this chain has to approach a bank. So also, the source of any new currency has to be a bank.

And that is where everyone leads a trail.

The entire chain of launderers is only as strong as its weakest link. The tax authorities have to crack only one of the agents in the chain, and a quick look into his communication records like phone, sms or email would reveal all the people he has been dealing with.

There are multiple ways to get to such people. All data of bank transactions is on record and is reported to tax authorities. Any spike or high value transaction in a normally defunct account can be traced easily using data analytics tools. From there on it is just a matter of tracing the branch, the account holder, and using the branches surveillance systems to catch any more accomplices.

Even if the entire exercise has been done via the connivance of the bank branch manager, he will still leave some or the other trail in the bank’s system to account for the sudden disappearance of a huge stash of cash received from the RBI. The RBI maintains a record of cash supplied to each and every branch and will obviously check the outflow of such cash too, to see that it reconciles with the inflow. And that can be enough to probe deeper and reveal more leads. As has been seen in many raids, even when the bank manager was hand in glove, the IT sleuths have caught up with him and the launderers.

And this is just the beginning.

We are right now in a dynamic situation since the window till 30th December to deposit old notes is still open. Banks are still accepting old notes and data is being generated even as we speak. Come January or February, all this data will be frozen and will be a gold-mine for analysts.

Any dormant account suddenly being triggered (egs: shell or dormant companies being used to launder cash) or any account which usually has lower volumes, or any newly opened accounts showing sudden increase, or any accounts showing a deposit and an instant transfer or withdrawal, all these anomalies will be crystal clear from the data of the banks. It would be only a matter of time before sleuths begin identifying and investigating the parties concerned.

This is as far as hard cash is concerned. How do they tackle any other forms of conversions? One of the popular modes could be the real estate sector. Deals could have been struck to sell properties at lower than fair values, with the difference being paid in old cash, basically the purchaser off-loading his cash onto the seller. The seller obviously has to get the cash to a bank, but there is another way they can get caught.

For the past few years, sub-registrar offices have been insisting on PANs of the parties involved in real-estate transactions. This data is then passed on to the Income Tax authorities. Till now such data was only used by the Income Tax Department in scrutiny assessments or in case of major mis-matches in tax returns and their data. But going forward, one wouldn’t be surprised if they start using this data more actively.

One possible move in the future could be opening up all the cases where properties were transferred from 9th November 2016 till 30th December 2016. Auto-generated notices can be sent to the concerned persons and where satisfactory replies are not received, or where some other parameters are inconsistent, further details can be asked for.

The fact is in today’s digital world, much more data is available and one needs only the will and skill to parse through all the data to catch the crooks. Hence it is only a matter of time rather than anything else, even though the party seems to have begun. And if you think this is the end, wait till GST comes. Once GST is implemented, the data at hand of the tax authorities will make tax evasion much harder.

AAP facing wide range of problems as Punjab approaches 2017 elections

OpIndia Staff
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AAP facing wide range of problems as Punjab approaches 2017 elections

Safe to say that everything hasn’t been well in Punjab. It is evident from election manifestos, articles and political discussions that drug addiction is severely damaging the state. As per 2012 stats, the drug addiction rate in Punjab was 234% higher than the country’s average. A survey conducted by Punjab Opioid Dependence in 2015 also found that 230,000 people in the state were using drugs. 

Akali Dal which is part of the incumbent Akali-BJP coalition has time and again come under scanner for its alleged links with narcotics mafia. Anger against the Akalis has grown to such an extent that many political experts suggested BJP to break coalition with them for the 2017 election. With the incumbents virtually written off, and the Congress party providing the same old alternative, Punjab was an ideal breeding ground for the Aam Aadmi Party.

From the beginning of 2016, reports, articles and editorials started emphasizing on the possibility of AAP winning the state.  But as the year progressed, the Aam Aadmi Party mounted so many problems for itself that now these problems are threatening its dream of Punjab domination.

The Succa Singh Chotepur saga:

Succa Singh Chotepur, the chief of the Punjab AAP, was sacked from his post after a sting operation emerged showing a man leaving a packet of cash with him. In his defense, Chotepur claimed that the man was referred to him by two Senior party leaders. After this, the political affairs committee of the AAP formed a disciplinary committee to probe allegations against him. Things took an interesting turn after Succa Singh Chotepur’s supporters released photos and audios implying that other AAP leaders also accepted bribes. Not only that, he also alleged AAP for selling party for the upcoming Punjab polls. On 30th September, Chotepur floated his own party called the Apna Punjab Party or the APP. The sabotage against Chotepur angle received more credence after AAP shelved the probe in the corruption sting against Chotepur, citing its futility since he left AAP.

Bhagwant Mann fiasco:

As per many reports, Bhagwant Mann is speculated as the possible CM candidate for Punjab AAP. Mann landed himself in a huge controversy after he shot a video inside the parliament premises, which gave away security positions inside the parliament. A lot has also been written and discussed about his alcohol addiction. Not only his fellow MPs have raised concerns about Mann coming drunk in the Parliament, Mann was also forced to leave a bhog because he was very drunk. Former MPs of AAP have claimed that Kejriwal was fully aware of Mann’s addiction.

Arvind Kejriwal himself:

Punjab makes a sizable chunk of the Indian armed forces. It is believed that Kejriwal alienated a sizable amount of Punjab electorate after asking for proof of the Surgical strikes carried out by the Indian army. He annoyed many of his followers after unnecessary dragging and politicizing the surgical strike issue.

AAP whipping up Khalistani sentiment:

AAP was in news for giving platforms to Khalistani separatists. Apart from reports, political parties and individuals have spoken about AAP receiving support from Pro-Khalistan radical Sikh groups. Congress leader like Amarinder Singh and AAP’s own MP Dharamveer Gandhi have also spoken about it. In February 2016, AAP campaingn posters showing Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale sparked controversies.

Rebels threatening to derail the ship:

Even though the Punjab wing of the AAP is barely three years old, it has already created a serious rebellion. The rebel group constituting of  rebel volunteers, workers and ticket aspirants earlier decided to contest 59 seats, and later announced that they may contest for all the 117 seats in the Punjab polls. The also invited all disgruntled AAP leaders except Succa Singh Chotepur into their fold.

Tickets being provided to children of seasoned criminals:

In a Twitter expose carried out by Anshul Saxena, Manjit Singh Sidhu who got a ticket from AAP belongs to a controversial family. According to Anshul, Manjit’s father Mohinder Singh Sailbrah has 7 cases against him.


As pointed in this thread, Manjit’s father has serious cases like attempt to murder, criminal intimidation, kidnapping and rioting pending against him.

Open letter to Kejriwal by an AAP leader:

Finally as Quaithe tells Daenerys Targaryen, “To go forward you must go back.” In order to go ahead lets go all the way back to the Punjab’s drug problem, from which we began the story. Kejriwal promises to make Punjab drug free in one month, but in a open letter written to Kejriwal by Virinder Singh Parihar, co-ordinator NRI wing and fundraising of the AAP, he has claimed that the observers whom Kejriwal sent to Punjab were themselves addicted to drugs. He also blamed that observers are involved in ticket selling and money laundering. He further claimed that AAP has collected almost Rs 200 crores in illegal cash from the people of Punjab.

Two days back, Captain Amarinder Singh tweeted a paper cutting which claims that AAP leaders are drugging people for political gains. This is again going to harm AAP a lot


AAP started with a very good momentum, but as the election dates are approaching, it seems AAP is losing ground. After drama on the surgical strike, Arvind Kejriwal has created a ruckus around demonetisation. Coincidentally, the sudden withdrawal of AAP from CMC election after demonetisation strengthens Parihar’s claims of illegal cash collected by AAP. It would be interesting to see how AAP will fight against all these issues.

How I dealt with Sexual Harassment on Twitter

Guest Author
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How I dealt with Sexual Harassment on Twitter

– by Priya Raju

It was a sad day in Tamil Nadu. The Chief Minister, the iconic Amma Jayalalitha Jayaram had died the previous night. Schools and colleges were closed and there was virtually no traffic in Chennai.

My maids and cook called me at 6 AM to say they boarded a share auto to come to work, but they were asked to get down and go back home. Shops were closed, perhaps as a mark of respect or to prevent untoward incidents in a city where emotions were running high. There was no milk delivery. I tweeted about what I viewed as an inconvenience – no buses, household help, autos or milk

And that opened the floodgates of abuse!

Much of it was class envy and male chauvinism. “Why don’t you cook for a day, you lazy woman?”, “Sweep & wash the floors today”, “Chilra!” (Cheap) “Echa” (Lickspittle), “Half Boil” (gutter slang for “Woman” in the Tamil twitter world) and the handy “Munda!” (Widow) were hurled at me. I thought they were plumbing the depths of misogyny with the last 2 curses. But there was more to come.

There’s an infamous comedy scene of actor Vadivelu, where he talks to a prospective bride. The “joke” is about the promiscuity of that girl, who has sex with everyone – including the gardener. I got a tweet with a picture of this scene (which every Tamil speaker recognizes) asking me “Has the gardener come, girl?” Another person asked me if my hands were so tired from servicing my male-servants. He went on to ask his male contacts if any of them cared to pay me a “visit”.

I’ll give you a few seconds to digest that. I can shrug off rudeness and trolling, but this was sexual harassment, plain and simple. You can’t spin it any other way. I decided to take action.

I reported the tweets to Twitter. They locked the 1st account, but they thought the 2nd set of tweets “wasn’t a policy violation”. My jaw hit the floor when I read that response. What would constitute a flagrant policy violation then, a gang rape?

In the meantime, the abuser whose account had been locked by twitter deleted the offensive tweet and tweeted to me. “Danke” (Thank you) he tweeted in German. “Ach, Bitte! “(Oh, Please!), I told myself. He’s utterly remorseless. Something snapped in me. I had to silence the cackling hyenas. I owed it to every single woman on social media, to our #Sisterhood.

I spoke to @Prajnya, an amazing group of people committed to ending gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Prajnya roped in Dr Debarati Haider, who runs the very excellent cybervictims.org.

With them and my husband supporting me, I calculated that I had nothing to lose. I had nothing to be ashamed of. My abusers were feeding off my silence and I could not abide by that.

I plunged headfirst into social media – and I named and shamed them. The torrent of moral support I received from people was nothing short of amazing. Complete strangers were expressing solidarity with me. I felt deeply grateful for all the kindness. Every voice raised against the treatment meted out to me was a voice against online sexual harassment.

And then? Abuser #2 deleted his account. Abuser #1 issued a lame-ass apology that I had “misconstrued his innocent remarks”. If you are a Tamil speaker, you will know that the punch line of that comedy scene is about the girl having a go with the gardener. If you have seen the clip, you will also know that there is absolutely no innocent way to construe his tweet. He continued to protest his innocence and went on to lock his account.

Some of their friends started trolling me, but I didn’t care. I had something elusive – I had peace. They thought they were shaming me, but in reality, I had shamed them.

Sexual harassment is so easy online, because seriously – what are the consequences? And the culprits are emboldened because often we choose to keep silent. This silence is seen as a victory by them, who think they shamed us. And that is why it is important to speak up and to act.

(Priya Raju is an engineer and an entrepreneur who lives in Chennai)

How the media misread and misreported Allahabad HC’s judgement over Triple Talaq

Hemant Bijapurkar
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How the media misread and misreported Allahabad HC’s judgement over Triple Talaq

Before the country was engulfed in the never ending debate on demonetisation, there was another issue, equally “divisive”, that had led people to debate and form opinions in support or against it – and that was the issue of practice of Triple Talaq, abolition of which was seen as a step towards Uniform Civil Code (UCC).

On one side was the AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board) that declared that attempts to abolish the practice was an assault on religious freedom an internal war – and they could get direct and indirect support from various parties – while on the other side were some Muslim women’s rights bodies and the government. There were even some self-declared “liberal” people who declared that they were opposed to UCC because it was BJP government on the other side!

The issue was back in news briefly yesterday, and it looked like a big breaking news, when some media houses reported this:

As per these reports, the Allahabad High Court had just declared the Triple Talaq unconstitutional! It was virtually a repeat of Shah Bano verdict then? Did the court just abolish the practice of triple talaq from India?

Though unfortunately, or fortunately depending on a person’s stand and views, it was another instance of media houses not getting into details and misreading the proceedings of a court.

It turns out that the Allahabad High Court judge had, during course of a judgment, just expressed his opinion on the matter by condemning Triple Talaq and called it a cruel and demeaning practice, but didn’t pronounce it unconstitutional. In fact the judge couldn’t have done that as the Supreme Court is seized of matter i.e. the matter is being considered by the apex court and it will decide on the constitutional legality of the practice.

The exact comments of Justice Suneet Kumar, as reported by the website Bar & Bench, is as follows:

“The instant divorce (Triple Talaq) though has been deprecated and not followed by all sects of Muslim community in the country, however, is a cruel and the most demeaning form of divorce practiced by the Muslim community at large. Women cannot remain at the mercy of the patriarchal setup…

…Personal laws, of any community, cannot claim supremacy over the rights granted to the individuals by the Constitution.”

If one goes through the five-page judgment that dealt with a particular case of divorce, the phrase “triple talaq is unconstitutional” is mentioned nowhere, even though many media houses reported the same within double quotes, which means quoting someone verbatim.

So it appears that some media houses creatively interpreted the last sentence of the above quoted paragraph to mean that Triple Talaq was unconstitutional. In fact, taking that line of interpretation, they could have as well argued that Personal Laws itself were unconstitutional, because Justice Kumar was referring to personal laws in general. Thank god, they didn’t go down that route or there would have been even more confusion and chaos.

Realising that they had jumped the gun, some media outfits like NDTV updated their report and headline (though the URL still shows the old headline) to reflect what was actually said by the court, while some[1][2] still continue to carry the flawed conclusion.

Hacker releases property details of Vijay Mallya, warns Congress of upcoming leaks

OpIndia Staff
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Hacker releases property details of Vijay Mallya, warns Congress of upcoming leaks

Within 10 days of hacking of Twitter accounts of Congress and Rahul Gandhi, another high profile Twitter account – that of socialite businessman Vijay Mallya – has been hacked, and the hacker(s) claim to be the same who hacked the accounts of the Congress party and its Vice President.

Unlike in the case of hacking of Rahul Gandhi’s account, there was no flurry of abusive tweets from the account of Vijay Mallya when it was hacked. In fact, a warning that the account could be hacked was posted in the wee hours of Friday, presumably by the real Vijay Mallya himself, where he informed that his emails were hacked and he was being blackmailed:



This information about emails being hacked and the name of the outfit “Legion” were the common link between hacking of Rahul Gandhi’s and Congress’ Twitter accounts. In those cases too, the access to Twitter accounts were reportedly made possible due to hacking of the associated email accounts and not by compromising Twitter’s security.

Around 7 hours after the above tweet, another tweet appeared on Vijay Mallya’s account, this time presumably from the hacker, who had got access and control to the Twitter account due to hacking of the emails. The hacker posted information about his various accounts and passwords.

This was followed by other tweets that claimed to release all information about his bank accounts, offshore assets, business deals, etc. These pieces of personal and confidential information were leaked in shape of email archives and documents and the files were uploaded on a server, allowing public to download and view them.

The hackers also disputed the claim made in the original tweet by Vijay Mallya, where he had accused them of blackmailing. Instead, they claimed that they were doing this (hacking and leaking information) to “bring these criminals to justice”. They further left an email address [email protected] and asked people interested in supporting their cause to get in touch with them.

This was followed by leaking of more bits of private information of Mallya – his UK address, phone numbers, photos of his passport and UK residence permit details, etc. – and leaking of information about his property and business deals such as list of cars owned by him and snapshots of balance sheets of his company and transaction amounts.

At the time of writing this report, the tweets containing the aforementioned pieces of information were deleted, but people could save a copy of those, apart from downloading the files shared by the hacker. We can’t say that the leaks prove any misdeeds by Mallya as these are matters of investigation. However, the leaks do look ominous for the liquor baron.

The possibility of the hacker being the same as the one who hacked Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was confirmed when the hacker sent the following tweet (now deleted) to the Congress leader:


Apart from the above tweet, in reply to a question put on Twitter, the hacker(s) claimed (tweet deleted) that they had been pursuing the email accounts of Congress for over four months and they were currently sifting through the information contained in them. They claimed to be in possession of copy of all emails of Congress leaders and members, and reiterated that they will release it in the new year.

If the claims are true, year 2017 could begin with a big political controversy.

News18 tries to cover up after wrongly quoting Deepak Parekh over demonetisation

OpIndia Staff
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News18 tries to cover up after wrongly quoting Deepak Parekh over demonetisation

Deepak Parekh, the Chairman of HDFC was one of the business leaders who hailed the government’s demonetisation by calling it a game changer and the biggest of all the big bang reforms.

However, yesterday, TV news channel News18 (also known as CNN-News18) published a post titled “In a major U-Turn Deepak Parekh says Demonetisation has Derailed Economy”.

Screenshot of the News18 tweet over Deepak Parekh
The original headline given by the news channel

Now if one takes it at face value, it appears that a Chairman of a major bank had changed his views and went from high praise to biting criticism in a matter of days. And that leaves you wondering if Mr. Parekh didn’t think through his statement earlier or some catastrophic events have taken place in the last few days forcing him to change his views.

The article by News18 was published on 7th December at 8:44 PM on its website. But today, even though the URL contains the phrase ‘In a major U turn Deepak Parekh Says Demonetization has derailed the economy’, the title of the article has now changed to “Deepak Parekh Says Demonetisation Has ‘Derailed Economy’ in the Short Term”.

Even the content has been revamped to suit the new title. So what changed?

The answer lies in the report itself. One has to watch the video along with the text in the report, because it remains unchanged. In fact, the title of the video uploaded on the YouTube channel of News18 is still the old one claiming a U-turn by Mr. Parekh.

The video begins with the news anchor saying, “Well, the initial optimism over the big bang move by the PM to scrap the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, ostensibly to tackle black money, patience is now wearing thin. In a stunning U-Turn the HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, who initially hailed the exercise, now says it is derailed the economy.”

Then the video cuts to Mr. Parekh’s voice and his first statement one can hear is:

“Demonetisation has derailed the economy for some time, and things will get back to normal, but it will get take a quarter or so.”

Into the conversation he again states that it is a game-changing decision and that there should be some normalcy come January. The anchor then proceeded to ask the Managing Editor of CNBC-TV18 Shereen Bhan as to were people losing faith in demonetisation. And her first statement was:

“Well I think to be fair to Mr Parekh, there is no U-Turn on the part of Mr. Parekh, Mr. Parekh has always maintained as have other corporate leaders, in the long term, which he reiterated to me in a conversation a short while ago, that in the long term while this could be a game changer for the government, in the short term there will be pain for the economy.”

Further by quoting the RBI, Shereen stated that at this moment no one really knows the full implication or the impact of this move.

The News18 news anchor then plays the news clip to Mr. Parekh’s initial interview where he was high praise for the move and then proceeds to ask Shereen Bhan as to if it shows people now questioning as to how the entire move has been implemented. Shereen again proceeded to say that it would be unfair to extrapolate that Mr. Parekh and others have suddenly turned skeptical.

So it was a case where one news channel CNN-News18 was trying to spin an interview conducted by a sister news channel CNBC-TV18 (both belong to the Network18 media group), and the original interviewer Shereen Bhan was clearly not amused over this spinning and twisting.

Also, going by Mr. Parekh’s full statement, by no stretch of imagination can his thoughts be interpreted as a major U-Turn. He was merely stating the adverse phase the economy seems to be going through in the short term. He repeated that demonetisation was a game-changer and hoped that normalcy will return by January.

So finally CNN-News18 took a U-Turn around 9:30 AM today edited the post to depict what Mr. Parekh actually said. However, the channel didn’t provide any clarification over why they edited the headline or the script.

UPDATE: After our article was published, News18 removed both the news report (cached copy) and the video clip from their website and YouTube channel respectively. We could not find any clarification, again, over their latest step.

However, derived reports making similar claims still exist on publications like Network18’s news portal Firstpost, leftist propaganda blog Scroll, and business newspaper Financial Express, and maybe at some other places too. Ideally they should also remove or modify their reports, now that the original source of their information is gone.

However, this is how the network of media functions. One of them makes a wrong claim, and everyone else follows blindly repeating the same claim. Even if the original one makes amends, the misinformation has spread far and damage has been done already.

Delhi government’s achievements in the education sector – Truth vs Hype

prashantb1984
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Delhi government’s achievements in the education sector – Truth vs Hype

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been promoting the work done by their team in reforming the government schools in Delhi for long.

I came across this article in The Huffington Post praising the work done by Manish Sisodia, Deputy CM who also holds the Education ministry, towards reforming government schools in Delhi. The article is written by Akshay Marathe, a joint secretary of AAP. So it is hard to identify whether the article was intended to be a journalistic report or yet another advertisement by the party, for itself. One has to love the hyperbole “the Aam Aadmi Party government is rescuing an entire generation”.

One has to give credit where it is due. Manish Sisodia has indeed realised that education is something critical. He is earnest to make an impact. And he is certainly making an effort. But effort does not necessarily translate to results, and misdirected effort can exacerbate the already dismal standards of Indian schools. In the end, it is not the effort or potential which matters, it is the results that count.

When the CBSE Class 12 results were declared in May this year, the state government and party congratulated itself on how the government schools had beaten the private schools. Manish Sisodia tweeted:



Looking at this, people will believe that it is a testimony to government’s efforts translating into results. However, when one goes into details, one finds that while the claim is factually correct, it is not any miraculous turnaround.

Past records show that in the last few years, the pass percentages of the government schools have been quite similar to those of private schools in Delhi. Government schools had done marginally better than private schools this year, but this was not for the first time. In 2009 and 2010 too, government schools had done better than private schools (pdf link). As recent as in 2013, under Sheila Dixit government, government schools had done better than private schools in Class X results too.

Secondly, as this well argued blog post points out, a large number of government schools in Delhi are not offering critical subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Biology. These are core subjects that bring down the pass rates as they are considered relatively difficult. This is an extremely crucial point. Government schools cannot claim to be doing their job unless they offer the crucial science stream to those interested in it.

Thirdly, as is evident from this tabulation of school wise performance in CBSE 2016 examinations, the average score in government schools is much worse than those of private schools. Nearly all the top performing schools in Delhi are privately run.

But it’s not just about government versus private schools’ performance. This competition – which is welcome if restricted to students getting better pass percentages and grades – is now turning into a bitter battle.

It is no secret that AAP has an extremely hostile relationship with the private schools in Delhi. This is also a politically convenient position for the party. Parents are understandably stressed by expenses related to education, coaching, stationary, and other facilities charged by many schools. By painting all private schools as thieves out to fleece the masses, AAP is making a visible attempt to cash in on this angst.

As a result, schools have been left with little autonomy in their admission process. And earlier this year, in a very drastic move, the AAP government was embroiled in a legal battle to take over a private unaided school, which it accused of indulging in malpractices and corruption. A couple of months back, Delhi High Court had blasted the state government for not maintaining the same standards that they expect from the private schools.

What the Delhi government is doing is, aggressively using the Right to Education act to stifle the autonomy of private schools that have not been lucky enough to qualify as “minority institutions”. The RTE is not just a draconian set of regulations resulting in the shut down of schools, it is also a sectarian law which is applicable only to non-minority schools. A large number of schools have understandable shielded themselves from this act by registering either as religious or linguistic minority schools.

The result of this has been, that despite the crazy demand at the time of nursery or kindergarten admissions, new high-quality private schools are simply not opening up in Delhi. In fact, it is Gurgaon and Noida where much of the capacity is being created.

Let’s take a look at case of International schools which are now becoming so popular especially among the urban elite. The website of the Cambridge board lists only three CIE-affiliated schools in Delhi, whereas the corresponding number is 22 for Harayana (out of which most are in Gurgaon). There are 21 in Telangana, mostly in and around Hyderabad. And there are 108 such institutions in Maharashtra, mostly in Mumbai and Pune. The shockingly low number of CIE affiliated schools in Delhi should be a sobering indicator that the hostile regime in the capital has removed any incentive for quality private players to enter the education space.

Perhaps it has to do with the kind of politics AAP engages in. It likes to be confrontational and aggressive. Whether it is about attacking the Modi government or attacking people who don’t agree with the party’s stand, this belligerent attitude seems to be percolating to forming educational policies too by its state government. But education is too important a sector to be treated like just another political battle. Hope the government realises that.

Demonetisation – how some in the low income groups are dealing with it

OpIndia Staff
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Demonetisation – how some in the low income groups are dealing with it

One month of demonetisation has passed and the step is already being evaluated for success or failure. While it would be early to pass a judgment, there is no denying the fact that in the past month we have seen various side effects of the step.

The most visible of these is going cashless. And people have often wondered and worried how the people belonging to the low income groups, especially those around them like house helps, building guards, construction workers, etc. are coping with. However, not many of us might have taken the effort to talk to these people to know their problems and maybe help them.

But there are people who are doing that. OpIndia got in touch with Sukrta Foundation, a Mumbai based NGO that provides 2 hour weekly free medical clinic to house helps, drivers, guards, workers, etc. who live in and around Powai in Mumbai. Sukrta started as a small initiative, but after a year of good work, every Thursday, the organisation is receiving 50-60 people queued up to avail free medical services at the clinic organised by Sukrta Foundation at Powai. So far the team has conducted around 90 sessions of free clinic and have attended to some 4000+ patients.

Vikas Goel (one of the founders) says that demonetisation didn’t lead to an abrupt increase in patient count at his clinic (assuming that the poor didn’t have new currency to spend at private hospitals, many of which were reportedly refusing to accept old notes). Last week, Sukrta went a step ahead and decided to talk to those coming at the clinic about their experiences post demonetisation.

On 1st December 2016, like any other Thursday, co-founder Surinder Gupta managed the patients while Dr. Nirmala Changrani patiently, attended to some 59 patients. This is when Sukrta team engaged with the waiting patients by talking to them about demonetisation. These are some of the experiences people shared:

“I don’t expect much difficulties because of note ban as Banks are accepting old notes till Dec end. She said even her kids’ school has allowed grace period till 30th Dec, which is a saving grace.” – Anita Naik, a housewife with a family income of 14K per month.

“I have applied for PAN card and now shall soon apply for a Bank account. Till then I have requested my uncle to deposit money in his account. I am a maid and got some advance salary from my employer in 100s. I am managing with my piggy bank.”  – Laxmi Mhatre, 32, a domestic help with a family income of 15k.

“My husband has a zero balance account and also ATM, now we shall start using it. He will get his salary late but hopefully in new currency notes. I think we can manage with cash shortage and things shall be normal soon.” – Salma Ismail, 27, whose husband binds books and family earns 7-8k per month.

“We don’t have a bank account, and we had to face difficulties as we exchanged 500 for 400. Now I will open account.” – Mamta Devi, 25, with a household income of 12k.

“Most of the ladies, who visited Sukrta Clinic said that they can manage with the cash-crunch in short term pain, however, will have to be dependent upon male members of the family for banking needs,” informed Saroj H, a volunteer with Sukrta who conducted these interviews.

A still from Sukrta Foundation
A still from the camp organised by Sukrta Foundation

Vikas told us that Sukrta Foundation doesn’t get government aid or sponsorship from any large corporate house. The organisation is run on small donations received from various good samaritans. People get to know about it through word of mouth or our social media campaigns and contribute to the causes we support. It costs them ~ Rs. 75 to treat one patient.

When asked, what excites the team to run the NGO, Vikas said, “We did some surveys in Powai and noted that many of the maids (domestic helps) didn’t have access to quality medical care. Whenever they or their family member fell sick, they would either avoid going to the Doctor or end up visiting some quacks. Even if they were able to visit government dispensaries, they were not able to procure medicines because of the high cost. In order to cater to this segment, we started our weekly clinic and dispensary.”

Apart from providing free clinic, Sukrta is also helping to educate people on social issues and how to manage finances in the post-demonetisation era. Not only they talked to the people about demonetisation, they invited Shalini Swaminathan, co-founder, Shamal, a self funded voluntary initiative to educate people about Adhaar, Bank Account, Insurance, Gold loans, etc.

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