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Why I decided to publish my first novel all by myself

Nirwa Mehta
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Why I decided to publish my first novel all by myself

I discovered that I enjoyed writing back in 2004 when I first took to blogging. As a shy, introverted girl, Internet was my happy place. “I’ll write a book”, I promised myself.

I was pursuing Chartered Accountancy. My father, who had to struggle a lot growing up, wanted to ensure that his daughter has a secured career. You see, grandfather was also a writer, and writers never got paid as much as Chartered Accountants did.

“Who’d want to read what you write?” he told me in an attempt to discourage me from writing.

In 2013, after completing my 3 years articleship training in Deloitte, Ahmedabad, and with 4 papers in CA finals pending to clear, I gave up. I quit Chartered Accountancy and pursued financial journalism for 2 years. I worked with The Financial Express, Ahmedabad, covering the 2014 elections and 2015 Vibrant Gujarat summit. It was a learning experience. From a cringeworthy first copy that I had filed to an error free copy in two months’ time, I learnt how to file a story.

In May, 2015, I quit to write a book. I had no backup plan. And I wrote. I finished my first draft by September 2015. That’s when I reached out to agents and publishers.

You’d have thought writing the book, about 60,000 odd words, would be the hardest job. Nope. Turns out it is the easier part. Getting a response from publishers and agents is the hard part.

Somehow, the publishing industry has such iron gates, that it is difficult to breach. Most never acknowledged the receipt of proposal and sample chapters. I got countless rejections. One publishing agent even decided to go out of his way to be rude and tell me it is one of the worst. All this because I broke the golden rule of ‘do not follow up otherwise he gets pissed off’. Wow.

Another agent offered ‘editing’ and ‘rewriting’ services for a couple of thousands with ‘no guarantee’ of finding me a publisher.

“Who’d want to read what you write?” kept echoing in my head. I was slowly losing any bit of confidence I ever had.

I couldn’t possibly have written that bad a copy, right? I mean, with all due respect, some of the books of Indian authors which have been published in the last few years are terribly written, with even more awful storyline. Those found publishers willing to pay money to print it! Is my manuscript even worse than that?

I kept the manuscript aside. I was so shattered. I decided I’ll rework the entire copy and go through the ordeal again.

I sat over it for 10 months, without making a single change. There were a few typos and some errors in the finished manuscript, which, as a writer, I missed while proofreading. I didn’t even bother to change them. I had lost all heart to re-read something which got rejected from all quarters.

Then I contemplated self-publishing. But isn’t it the last resort of the brats of rich parents who pay to get their substandard stuff printed? And doesn’t that cost a lot? Should I really pay for something I may end up making eventual loss on?

I checked out various self publishing platforms. Some were reasonable, some were way too expensive. If they were reasonable, the price of your printed book would be so high, no one would buy, and if you wanted to keep a reasonable sales price of your book, you had to pay too much to get it printed. You just couldn’t win there.

I even looked up the new age app-based publishing platforms, but they didn’t excite me as much.

But most of all, I was shocked and disheartened at the sheer lack of communication from the communications professionals. I mean, this entire industry is based on communication, how can you not have proper communication channels. You have to constantly walk on eggshells around them because you could not follow up as they might get offended. Most of the people I interacted with were either rude or arrogant or appeared to just not be interested in talking to someone who doesn’t come ‘highly recommended’ by the mighty and powerful.

Suddenly the idea of going back to studies and finishing off those 4 papers in CA finals seemed like a better idea. Well, I might end up doing something I don’t love, but at least there wouldn’t be heartbreaks like these, right?

And then, one fine day, out of curiosity, I checked out Amazon Kindle’s self publishing tool. I googled it up a bit and within minutes I had made up my mind. I had put in a lot of hard work and love in writing something which I know for a fact is good. I knew I had done a good job. I just wanted more and more people to read it. I registered for Kindle Direct Publishing and within 24 hours, my book was live on Amazon to be purchased and read.

I had put it up out there. I was ready for brickbats and criticism, but secretly hoped every one who purchased the book found it worth their money and time spent on it.

And when I started getting reactions from complete strangers, I was overwhelmed. Everyone had good things to say about it. Yes, there was some constructive criticism which came with it, but every single one liked it. I never strived to write the best-ever award winning fiction. No. I just wanted to entertain people. And I think I have managed to do that.

I am now working on my second book, because, I am not going to give up.

A big shoutout to those who stood by me. And those who didn’t. Those who told me I couldn’t. Because, I did.

You could buy my debut novel, Flawed But Fabulous, by visiting this link.

Why Muslims are not allowed to keep long beard in the armed forces

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Why Muslims are not allowed to keep long beard in the armed forces

Rarely is religion in the equation when it comes to the armed forces, but in cases like sporting of facial hair on the basis of one’s religion, it has resulted into disputes and even dismissal of soldiers.

The issue came to limelight a couple of days ago when the Supreme Court dismissed the plea of Ansari Aftab Ahmed, who was sacked from the Air force in 2008 for sporting a long beard without permission. Ansari had claimed that he had the right to grow beard as per his religious beliefs and had refused to follow orders to shave it, but the apex court didn’t agree with that argument.

Court agreed with the view of Air Force, which had argued that all Muslims do not carry beard and that the practice of growing and keeping a beard was not among the central practices of Islam, hence the orders to shave off the beard was not impinging on any religious beliefs or rights.

Aftab was deemed to have violated the rules and discipline of the armed forces and hence his dismissal was upheld by the court. And this is not the first case, as we will find later in this article.

But at this point, a reader might wonder why should the armed forces be concerned about haircut or facial hair of soldiers to begin with? Isn’t that too small an issue? And shouldn’t adults be allowed to choose for themselves?

That argument might appear logical but we have to understand that we are talking about an organisation – the Indian armed forces – which is universally accepted and acknowledged as being one of the most disciplined ones. Grooming is a part of that discipline.

Armed forces have such rules for grooming – with a few exceptions for Sikhs – because they bring uniformity in appearance. The underlying belief is – a common citizen should see a solider whose appearance doesn’t reflect any religious bias.

In order to maintain this uniformity and discipline, our armed forces have some rules regarding sporting facial hair. Here are those:

Indian Air Force:

As per Defence Service Regulations, sporting a beard is not permitted except when religion prohibits shaving it off. The exact words are:

pdf source

Since Air force believes that Islam doesn’t prohibit cutting of the hair or shaving the beard, and thus the sub-section (b) was not applicable to Muslims, a directive was notified in 2003, which made things a bit clearer:

“Only those Muslim personnel, who had kept beard along with mustache at the time of commissioning /enrollment prior to 01 Jan 2002, would be allowed to keep beard and mustache… Muslims who have grown beard after joining service should shave off the beard. Under no circumstances, a Muslim person who had beard at the time of joining service before 1 Jan 2002 shall be allowed to maintain beard without mustache. Mustache would be a part of the beard.”

Indian Army:

Army too follows the Defence Service Regulation and they have similar rules that forbids sporting beards, though the mention of Sikh religion is explicit. The exact relevant portions are:

pdf source

In short, beard would not be permitted for non-Sikh soldiers, as was witnessed in the case of Maktumhusen. Maktumhusen, a 34-year-old Muslim from Dharwad, Karnataka, was a sepoy who joined the Army Medical Corps in 2001. After almost a decade of service he sought permission from his Commanding Officer to grow a beard on religious grounds. He was allowed the same but was asked to get a new ID card and was instructed not to change his look for the rest of his service tenure.

His request though was later turned down after the CO discovered the above amendment to Regulation No. 665 of the Defence Services Regulations, which stated that those other than Sikhs could not sport a permanent beard.

Maktumhusen grew a beard and was meanwhile transferred to Command Hospital, Pune. His CO there also asked him to get rid of his beard. After his refusal and a show cause notice, he was sentenced to a fortnight of detention and was later discharged from service. Later the Army Tribunal upheld the same and also noted that Sikhs were provided permission to sport a beard because:

“No one can dispute the fact that growing of hair and beard by Sikhs is an essential practice of their religion and, in fact, fundamental tenet of that religion. Recognising the religious faith, belief and practice followed by them in the case of Sikh military personnel an exception has been made allowing the Sikh military personnel to grow hair and beard.”

Indian Navy:

When it comes to the Indian Navy, it is probably the most lax when it comes to the facial hair and allows the blandishment of beards and moustaches provided they are neatly trimmed and prior permission has been granted by seniors.

Even though sporting beard is allowed, Sikhs still find a mention in the rules as officers and sailors are expected to keep their beard trimmed – something Sikhs can’t do. The relevant portion of the regulations are as follows:

pdf source

Interestingly, the last UPA government issued a few statements saying demands of devout Muslims will be considered, hinting that Army and Air Force could be asked to modify the rules. The then Defence Minister AK Antony is reported to have made that promise to a group of Muslims while blaming the previous NDA government for introducing the rules. But the UPA government backtracked in the court and didn’t force the armed forces to change their rules.

The truth behind political parties being exempt from tax scrutiny for deposit of old notes

OpIndia Staff
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The truth behind political parties being exempt from tax scrutiny for deposit of old notes

First check out the following headlines of various media outlets:

All the above news articles scream in their headlines that the Income Tax Department will not scrutinise the deposit of old Rs 500 notes and Rs 1000 notes by political parties.

Obviously, from reading just the headline, it appears that firstly, this is a new law brought into force, and secondly, that this is a gaping loophole. The headlines suggest as if political parties have a sacrosanct position under Income Tax and are hence exempt from “scrutiny”.

If so, can these media houses explain the following:

Just last year, Political parties like AAP, Congress and many others were “scrutinised” by the very same Income Tax department! The 2015 story in the Economic Times goes on to say (emphasis ours):

“According to CBDT, the taxman has taken action after suspicion that a number of bogus or ‘entry operator’ companies were converting illegal cash into legitimate money in the national capital by donating black money to parties after similar instances were detected by its sleuths in Kolkata. The notices which have been issued in Delhi include AAP and Congress for receiving donations worth Rs 2 crore and Rs 10 lakh, respectively.”

So in early 2015 itself, political parties were under the scanner for being suspected conduits to convert illegitimate money, but if we believe media reports, they suddenly became exempt from any scrutiny in late 2016? They can now safely become a conduit to convert black money into white?

The truth lies in the details. As explained in our previous article, the only exemptions afforded to the political parties are that they are exempt from Income Tax (as they are not allowed to undertake commercial activities), and that donations below 20,000 rupees are not required to be reported to the Election Commission of India. Both these rules are not new and have been existing in the statutes for many years now.

As far as accepting the old 500 and 2000 rupees notes are concerned, the government made it clear that parties are not allowed to deposit those notes that came to them as donations after November 8 – the day when the demonetisation was announced.

Hence, trying to portray them as a new rule introduced by the current government is utter lie, as the following headline does:

At no place does the Income Tax Act proclaim political parties to be exempt from tax scrutiny. Political parties are required to maintain books of accounts, file income tax returns, be open to scrutiny (as was seen in the 2015 case), and even be ready for searches and raids.

In fact, whenever an assessee returns tax-free or exempt income, his case is more likely to be taken by the IT officers, than say an assessee who is subject to normal tax rates, because the person enjoying the exemption can misuse it.

As we had explained in another article, any sort of jugglery to convert old notes eventually leads the person to a bank. And once you deposit such notes in the bank, it is very easy for the Tax department to scrutinise the person’s data.

In case of political parties, surely they can try to launder money, but as soon as they deposit the money in the bank, they leave a trail. From thereon, it is a simple case of adding two plus two. A party which shows a sudden spike in donations and deposits is most likely to be indulging in some nefarious activities. This can be detected by some of the most rudimentary analytical tools.

So will a political party actually take such a risk? The consequences can be lethal. Even a news report (leave alone conviction by any authority) can do irreparable damage to the party’s public image. A conviction can jeopardise the whole party and their recognition can be cancelled by the ECI.

And funding of political parties has always been a hot-topic for scrutiny by not only Income Tax Departments, but also by courts. Just recently both Congress and BJP were seen battling a Delhi High Court verdict holding them prima facie guilty of violating the law on foreign funding. Although the term “foreign funding” sounds ominous, in the instant case, both the parties had only accepted donations from subsidiary companies of the Vedanta group (owned by Anil Aggarwal). Due to technical reasons, these subsidiaries were found to be “foreign companies” by the Court, and hence the parties were in a soup.

In such a situation, where political parties across the spectrum have always been facing heat over their donations, either from the Income Tax Department or from the Courts, it is highly misleading when news reports’ headlines scream that they will be exempt from tax scrutiny. A few reports did mention the truth in the main body, but the headlines are enough to fool anyone.

Having said so, tax reforms in the sphere of political parties are long overdue. The rule that donations below 20,000 rupees are not required to be reported to ECI needs to be scrapped as soon as possible. Parties should be made to declare granular data of each donation received by them. The fight against black money must be extended to all.

Demonetisation and the miraculous rise of Humanity

Divya
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Demonetisation and the miraculous rise of Humanity

The most path-changing inventions and discoveries in our world have often been unintentional.

Like Christopher Columbus set off to discover India and ended up finding the land of abundance, the United States of America. Wilhelm Roentgen was fiddling around with inconsequential cathode rays when he ended up inventing the X-ray. Even Cornflakes were invented only because Will Kellogs was too lazy to put the boiled wheat dough into the refrigerator!

Similarly, something magical happened on the night of November 8th 2016 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his grandiose demonetisation drive. What set off as a purely financial exercise, mainly with the intention of cleaning up a huge chunk of parallel economy, ended up awakening the collective conscience of our nation.

With demonetisation, a hitherto sleeping giant was awoken from its deep slumber. This giant is called Humanity.

Humanity suddenly woke up to the misery of India’s wretched millions. Countless nameless people who had fallen through the cracks of our society and had lost all hopes of ever being heard, magically found a voice. All of a sudden Humanity was curious. Is there someone standing in a line who I must look out for? A poor farmer, a pregnant woman, or a retired army man?

The poor farmer, who had lost his land to land sharks close to the established ecosystem and had all along been exploited by corrupt governments, has finally found a saviour. Never mind that the water meant for irrigation of his fields was diverted to sugar mills run by crafty politicians. Humanity will now be his voice. His tears will be given a platform as soon as humanity is able to connect their source to demonetisation.

The army man also has found his benefactor. The brave soldier who has been struggling to fight for his dues off field and is managing to fight with substandard equipment on it. His misery of 60 years is finally about to end. Humanity will find him standing in a bank queue and rush to his rescue. His face, streaming with tears will be splashed across and heart rending headlines will call out to his plight.

The poorest of poor children, who have all along been denied medical treatment, education and even basic rights like food can now rejoice. Because humanity is now awake. All it needs to figure out is a way to connect their plight to the evil demonetisation.

Humanity has some pet peeves. Long queues outside banks are on the top of the list. If humanity had been awake when millions of people spent half their lives queueing up outside ration shops for basic food items, it would have been very angry. It would have also lost its cool at the ghastly divide of the poor and the rich. It would have taken strong exception to the fact that so many in our country went hungry and malnourished as they had no “cash” to buy food.

Humanity would have certainly hated the fact that people were classified as rich if they earned more than 29 rupees a day while the rich stashed their lockers, mattresses and hidden lofts with currency.

But we can all now heave a sigh of relief. For demonetisation may or may not succeed with its original objectives but our nation should be thankful that the unintended consequences of this diabolic scheme have had far reaching noble effects.

Humanity is finally awake after 65 years. An achievement that no other government has succeeded with in the past.

Political parties and ‘income tax’ on donations – all you need to know

Ashutosh Muglikar
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Political parties and ‘income tax’ on donations – all you need to know

Elections and the conduct of the legislature in India is governed under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which empowers the Election Commission of India (ECI) to form rules for elections and political parties.

As per current rules, political parties in India are barred from undertaking any commercial activity and thus they are not deemed to be engaged in acts that make them liable to pay any income tax. But it doesn’t mean that parties are not under the radar of the tax authorities.

Yesterday, this misleading tweet by news agency Reuters created a lot of confusion on social media (the agency then tweeted a rejoinder to make things clearer):


To help you understand things better, here are a list of issues – in FAQs format- that you should know:

Q1. Were political parties always exempted from paying income tax?

Ans: Yes. Under Section 13A of the IT Act, political parties are exempt from paying Income Tax. But they are required to file their Income Tax Returns (ITR). This is a very old provision.

Q2. So we can know from where their income i.e. their donations are coming from?

Ans: Technically yes, but there is one loophole.

Q3. What is that loophole?

Ans: Donations below 20,000 rupees are not required to be reported to the ECI (Sec 29C, sub-section 3) but they have to be reported in the ITR. Political parties are essentially not required to disclose details of those donating below 20,000 rupees.

Q4. How is it misused?

Ans: Simple study of IT returns of any political party will show that maximum donations to them are from such ‘unknown’ sources.

Q5. Does it mean that Income Tax Department cannot scrutinise political parties?

Ans: Not really. Parties are exempted from income tax, but they still have to: a. maintain books of accounts, b. file returns, c. be open to scrutiny, even raids, etc.

Q6. Have political parties ever been raided or questioned over their source of funds?

Ans: I haven’t come across cases of raids. However, their returns are scrutinised just like any other assesses, and Income Tax department takes note of complaints against them too. As recent as last year, Congress and AAP had received notices from the department. Question here is how far the department will go in pursuing such cases.

Q7. Can I access the ITR of these political parties? If yes, how?

Ans: Although most parties are disputing the ruling, they were deemed to be under the RTI act by the CIC. Thus one could file an RTI and get information like their balance sheet, income statement and even the donors list (information in donors list can be incomplete based on record keeping of the party and because of that aforementioned loophole). However, since the matter is currently disputed and sub-judice, right now you may not get any response.

Q8. Can donation details given in ITR be different number from donation report submitted to the ECI?

Ans: Donations given in ITR is the sum of total donations received (including below the 20k threshold) by the party, while the donations report submitted to the EC are those of above Rs. 20,000, listing the details of the donors, their addresses and their mode of payments; so information contained in both the documents will be different.

Q9. Can a Party convert black money to white?

Ans: Technically, yes. Parties can take money and show them as donations below 20,000 rupees (making backdated entries showing that donations were taken before demonetisation was announced) and try to convert it into white money for a ‘cut’. But do remember that they have to furnish expenditure details to the ECI too, thus there is always a way to catch this scam. Strong political willpower will be needed to nail such parties.

Q10. Do you think Narendra Modi will do it?

Ans: I hope he does! I am sure he knows about this possibility. Wasn’t that the reason he asked all his MPs to submit their bank statements by 31st December? I hope he will check bank statements of not only the BJP but of all political parties.

Q11. Are you sure political parties are indulging in such scam?

Ans: Believe me it’s not that easy. If caught, it can jeopardise the whole party and their recognition can be cancelled by the ECI. Surely a party should think twice before indulging in such deeds.

Q12. What should be the way forward?

Ans: There should be more transparency in political funding. Donations below 20k should have the same rules as applicable to donations above 20k i.e. Name, Address, and PAN details of donors must be recorded, and finally the ITR details should be made public. This will need an amendment to the Representation of Peoples act and the IT act.

When journalists joined Kejriwal in attacking Paytm without any valid reason

OpIndia Staff
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When journalists joined Kejriwal in attacking Paytm without any valid reason

In popular belief, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) comes into the picture only when the courts or the government thinks a serious crime has been committed and the local police or administration may not have enough resources or skill-set to investigate that. Most of the talked about cases handled by the CBI are indeed of such nature, however, this doesn’t mean that all cases handled by the CBI are of this nature only.

The fact is that private parties can approach the CBI, and also that the bureau does register cases more often than commonly believed. Just go through the Press Releases issued by the CBI on their website and you can see the frequency of new cases being registered following complaint by various parties that are neither governments nor courts.

There are many examples one can find if one makes a little effort. A recent one being of Anand Rai, better known as the whistleblower of the Vyapam scam of Madhya Pradesh, who filed a complaint directly with the CBI in in July 2015. Rai could file a complaint when BJP was in power both in the state and at centre. Basically, you don’t need to be in favour of the ruling party to approach the CBI. The case was finally handed over to the CBI with courts monitoring it.

When Prashant Bhushan was in AAP, he too had filed complaint with the CBI against a then union minister Praful Patel back in 2013. And as recent as three months ago, a businessman had filed a complaint with the CBI against former union minister P Chidambaram.

On its website under the Frequently Asked Questions and Contact Us pages, CBI makes it amply clear that people can file a complaint with it for Cyber Crimes, Economic Crimes, Human Trafficking, etc. though it tells people not to approach it for conventional crimes like murder, theft, robbery etc., because they are taken up by the CBI only after being directed by the Supreme Court / High Courts or referred by the State Governments.

Now the common man may not be aware of all this, but a journalist should be. Or at least the journalist should make an effort to find out about these before making comments and passing judgments. But when it comes to pushing propaganda, these things don’t matter.

And that’s what happened today when a news report was shared informing that CBI has registered a case following a complaint filed by Paytm – the digital wallet provider – for a suspected economic fraud.

The news was reported by news agency PTI – and thus was blindly copied and shared by all news organisations – and its reporter had this additional comment to pass:


Not Delhi Police because a cyber fraud can take place from anywhere? Better to approach the CBI if the rules allow so that there is no quarrel of “jurisdiction”? But to realise this, you either need to know the rules or be not driven by propaganda.

Nonetheless, once the doubt was seeded, it was followed up and amplified by senior and “respected” journalists like Shekhar Gupta, who too outraged without considering the facts we put in in the beginning in this article. Is he not aware of those facts?


Once the outrage was given credibility by “respected” journalists, the not-so-respected ones jumped in adding a dash of conspiracy theory aligned with Kejriwal’s politics:


And when the incumbent union government is involved, how can Arvind Kejriwal be far away?



This was followed by all AAP aligned journalists and trolls showering hate on Paytm again, which has replaced Ambani-Adani for the duration of demonetisation.

With this manufactured outrage growing, the CBI clarified (which it would not have needed to, if the journalists had done some basic google search) that it had the rights to register such cases. Not just Paytm, the CBI had registered cases following complaints by companies like Snapdeal, Google, ICICI pockets, etc. So there was no special treatment given to Paytm as the AAP journalists tried to suggest.

The CBI further informed that a similar complaint by Paytm was registered by it in August this year too. But then no demonetisation drive was in place, so it didn’t cause any outrage by Arvind Kejriwal and the assorted knowledgeable journalists.

This Scroll reporter can write reports on anything just by imagining things

Rahul Roushan
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This Scroll reporter can write reports on anything just by imagining things

One of the most used, rather abused, term in journalism is “sources”. Sources are supposed to be those informers who prefer to be anonymous. On most other occasions, journalism is either opinion or analysis by an individual or collection of pieces of information credited to various sources that are not anonymous.

It is somewhat natural to trust information that comes from a non-anonymous source. There are exceptions, such as WikiLeaks or some hackers, but in general we dismiss information from anonymous sources as “rumours”.

However, those rumours suddenly become ‘news reports’ when published in a newspaper or distributed through some other mainstream media platform. Because then, for an average reader, the “source” becomes the media itself.

As a result, journalism has been being used as a tool to convert rumours into credible information by many, just as some banks these days are being used to convert black money into white.

Let’s be clear that not all information credited to anonymous sources are worth dismissing as rumours. Broadly, the need to use anonymous sources can be divided into four categories:

  1. Revealing the identity can jeopardise safety of the source: There could be cases when a source is exposed to risks of physical assaults or other hazards if his or her identity is publicised. Say a whistleblower revealing the details of corruption in an organisation, or a common man revealing some information about a local gangster. Internationally famous example is of Deep Throat, who forced a US President to resign.
  2. The source is not authorised to speak but information is credible: This especially happens when rigid protocol or bureaucracy is involved. It will take too much time for the information to be dispensed in an ‘official’ way but the nature of the information is topical. We at OpIndia.com took this route when one official at PMO didn’t want to be identified but confirmed that PMO had not given any permission to Reliance for using PM’s pic in the Jio ad. The same was confirmed officially in the parliament 12 weeks later.
  3. The source wants to manipulate things in his or her favour by planting news: This often happens in party politics or corporate games. Readers would recall how letters and other boardroom developments got ‘leaked’ in media in the ongoing Tata-Mistry tussle. Same happens when some politician wants to manipulate public sentiments – selected materials are leaked and news reports planted with information often credited to anonymous sources. The journalist is either complicit in this manipulation or is stupid to be used as a tool – both are not desirable.
  4. The source is the journalist’s wild imagination: Yes, it happens. We recently saw a case where a journalist created sources like an imaginary rape victim and her mother, and claimed to have talked to them; that journalist could face prosecution. But what is rare is this risk of prosecution, not this type of journalism. Journalists know that they can make up some stuff easily without getting caught as no one will bother going to courts or forcing any inquiry.

So whenever you see a report that extensively quotes “sources” or uses phrases like “on conditions of anonymity” or “who didn’t want to be named” – apply the above four standards, in that order, and you will know what kind of journalism you are consuming.

And that is what we did to a reporter of the leftist propaganda blog Scroll, whose entire reportage, especially those about the BJP or the RSS, is based on quoting anonymous sources.

This reporter is someone named Dhirendra K Jha, whose political acumen and understanding is reflected in his analysis of 2014 general elections. He wrote the following articles, none of which quoted any identifiable person:

  • Caste politics neutralises Modi wave in Bihar, BJP in race for only 9 seats – the article by Jha predicted a maximum of 9 seats for entire BJP alliance in Bihar; BJP alliance won 31 out of 40 seats
  • Has the Modi wave run into a Maya tsunami in eastern UP? – yes, the dude saw a Mayawati tsunami in Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati’s party couldn’t win a single seat of out 80 seats in the general elections.
  • Simmering tensions between Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh dent Modi’s mission in UP – the article quotes three BJP leaders – all wanted to be anonymous – and claims that Amit Shah was not getting support of local leaders and BJP could not do well in Uttar Pradesh. BJP alliance won 73 seats out of 80.

One can still give benefit of doubt to this reporter in love with anonymous sources because not many people got 2014 right. But it is not about getting the elections right, it is about using the tool of quoting anonymous, rather imaginary, people to push forward an agenda.

You have to go through the recent articles of Jha and apply the aforementioned standards wherever – and that’s like everywhere – he has quoted anonymous sources, and you can safely discard the first two cases, which are legitimate reasons to use anonymous sources.

For example, among his latest reports is this one on how RSS has found out that public support for demonetisation is waning. The article quotes a “senior RSS office bearer” but doesn’t identify him. Only time an RSS affiliated person is named is when Jha’s article quotes a report by The Telegraph. If The Telegraph can name an RSS person, why can’t Scroll? Because Jha never talked to any such person and just imagined things up based on what he read in The Telegraph?

In another of his recent articles, this Scroll journalist claims that Modi’s rally was cancelled because party feared that people are angry with demonetisation. The article quotes three BJP leaders, none of whom wanted to be identified. You can safely discard the first two cases of legitimate use of anonymous source even here because the state BJP spokesperson – the official channel to dispense information – said on record that “There is no doubt that people are facing problems”. Why does Jha need to quote anonymous people then?

In yet another article trying to push the narrative that BJP is worried over lack of popular support on demonetisation, Jha quotes four BJP leaders in his article, none of whom wanted to be identified. So convenient, and so frequent.

These are just a few recent examples. If one goes through the entire “work” of Dhirendra K Jha for the leftist propaganda blog Scroll, one would find numerous and nauseating usage of crediting quotes or information to anonymous BJP and RSS functionaries. And all of these quotes help drive an anti-BJP or anti-RSS narrative.

Since the first two cases of legitimate use of anonymous sources are simply discarded in his case, either this reporter has some special access to unhappy BJP and RSS leaders, or he is just happily imagining things. Take your pick.

This is how Pakistani media ‘managed’ Vijay Diwas

Hemant Bijapurkar
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This is how Pakistani media ‘managed’ Vijay Diwas

Dec 16: On this day in 1971, 93000 Pakistani forces led by General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi surrendered before the Allied forces of Mukti Bahini and Indian Army led by General Jagjit Singh Aurora. This ensured the culmination of the 13 day Indo-Pak war and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh. This day is celebrated as Vijay Diwas in India and Bijoy Dibos in Bangladesh.

It is obvious that Pakistan has got nothing to celebrate on this day. They were the aggressors and then the vanquished. But how do they ‘manage’ this day?

Using a loose analogy, if you trample forcefully on a rose and its thorn gets stuck in your feet making you bleed, you can do one of these:

  1. You can concede that you were being stupid and you paid a price.
  2. Walk away pretending that nothing happened.
  3. Blame the rose and the thorn.

And various sections of the Pakistani media did all the things above.

Media following the 1st option:

Might be hard to believe, but some media houses did try to be sensible in their approach.

The Dawn:

Probably the most well known Pakistani newspaper decided to re-plug their 2012 4 part op-ed on 1971. Even though it doesn’t talk about the events of war and makes just a passing remark on the surrender of Pakistani forces, it is still a very objective analysis (no comments on the accuracy) of how and why the creation of Bangladesh took place and the faults of the Pakistani establishment with respect to East Pakistan from 1947. One of the paragraphs read:

Pakistan started counting traitors before it actually became a nation. There has hardly been a time since its birth that it did not find itself on a crossroad, crying foul at the top of its voice.

Dawn last year on Dec 16 had carried all the Jihadi propaganda advertisements that appeared in the newspaper from 14th-18th December 1971, and reminded people of the ‘dark times’ when hysteria was created and people of East Pakistan were painted as enemies in a holy war.

The Daily Times:

Another leading Pakistani publication, it published an op-ed ‘Reliving the ’71 debacle: political or military?’ which does the difficult job of acknowledging the atrocities inflicted upon by the Pakistani army and its military government on the citizens of East Pakistan and talks about the denial Pakistan still lives in.

The News International:

The News International too talked about the events from 1947 to 1971 which led to the 1971 episode, highlighting how socio-political reasons caused the rift between the two Pakistans.

Media following the second option:

It is perhaps the easiest thing to do, just pretend that December 16 is just another day and go on with your life. Many chose to do so. Or better, publish something attacking India e.g. The Nation, which published an usual op-ed that blamed India for sponsoring terror in Pakistan and contained statements like, ‘Since Mr. Modi attained power in 2014 with the help of terrorist organisation RSS.’

Media following the third option:

This one is most amusing and there are many practitioners!

Pakistani Observer:

A publication called the Pakistani Observer decided to the blame India and Bangladesh for everything and tried to painstakingly portray Pakistan as a victim of the “atrocities”.

One article titled ‘Repercussions of 1971 war’ began with how Indian government declared an open war against Pakistan (even though Pakistan led the first assault), called the genocide carried out by Pakistanis a complete fabrication, and blamed India for denying basic rights to some of its own citizens.

Taking this fiction writing a step further, the paper published another story titled ‘Bleakest day in Pakistan’s history’, which claimed how Mukti Bahini was created by RAW and that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman used to visit India since 1960s to hatch conspiracies against West Pakistan.

In short, the most sensible coverage was limited to carrying an op-ed and none overtly talked about the actual war and the surrender of Pakistani forces. Also, most of these articles were confined to not so prominent corners in the respective publications. Pakistan could survive the day.

Narrative against Income Tax raids and why it reminded me of my college days

Rahul Raj
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Narrative against Income Tax raids and why it reminded me of my college days

When I entered my college, very soon I learnt from my seniors and my batch-mates that our college is lagging far behind at global standards. Being at one of the best engineering colleges in India, it rendered me reeling in shock, disappointment, frustration and a grave fear; the fear to imagine how other engineering colleges are running in India.

Our labs were either running equipment based on outdated technologies or they were embellishing expensive sophisticated electron microscopes which remained untouched in air-conditioned rooms because of lack of skill-set to handle it. Our professors were teaching courses which had become obsolete long back. These professors were very learned and talented, but they stuck to obsolete curriculum because the system didn’t change it for years.

But many of my batch-mates were determined to bring whatever reform was possible within our limit; by approaching professors, HOD, Dean and Director. However, our highly resolute enthusiasm waned every time we interacted with any college authority, and by the time we reached our final year, most of my batch-mates actually wanted the status-quo to be retained. They became so averse to changes that a professor talking about reforms, like adding new chapters or increasing number of lectures, was seen as an autocrat.

After spending 3-4 years at the college, we had gotten so aligned with the system that we started finding faults in every reformative step. We started disliking the same changes we sought when he entered the college.

Now when I see the pattern of discourses driven and pursued by our “left-liberals”, I can correlate it to that final year fault-finding phase.

For long we all wanted the governments to clean the black-money mess, to systematize the method of payment, to use technology for improving transactions, to check money launderers and hoarders, but as soon as a government took a strict step, our left-liberals started nitpicking and attacking every single incident – factual or fake – floated on the social media.

On 8th November, PM Modi announced the demonetisation step; by 9th November we had hundreds of newly-born left-liberal economists writing how demonetisation will topple the economy of India forever. They just couldn’t think or see anything beyond it. They had to run it down because Modi came on TV and announced it.

It was obvious that demonetisation was not the only step taken against corruption. It was also conceded, by Modi himself, that the whole exercise will increase inconvenience and work-load. But these were sudden Nobel-worthy discoveries by our new economists. And new discoveries kept coming up.

The initial discovery of “people don’t keep black money in cash” took no time to change into “people are easily converting their huge pile of black money through bankers”. Soon there were tons of articles on how government failed to check corrupt bankers.

But the joyous season for money launderers and engaged corrupt bankers couldn’t survive for long. Modi, in one of his rallies, revealed that the government has secretly conducted sting operations on banks and corrupt bankers wouldn’t escape. The series of raids conducted by the Income Tax department also hints that the government has not taken the implementation casually, but instead placed checks to catch the offenders.

When the numbers of raids increased, I was getting jittery to see no narrative against it. Then I read an article titled “I-T Seizures Are Illegal Since There’s No Law Against Holding Cash” in The Quint, I am at ease and satisfied now. Everything is right with the left-liberals.

Coming back to the the article, it highlights two points:

  1. These so-called seizures are illegal because there is no law or regulation that forbids people from holding cash.
  2. I-T officers across India “are under tremendous pressure to raid and seize” cash, whether in the old or new high denominations.

However as you scroll down the article, you will find it getting incoherent. Under the section, “Illegal and Frustrating Exercise”, it mentions Rs 1.54 crores seized in new currency notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500:

Can we justify someone managing Rs 1,54 crores in new currency a month’s time? Is the seizure or the process of getting that currency more likely to be illegal?

The article further mentions I-T Department raids in Chennai for Rs 24 crores in new currency notes, raids in Panjim for Rs 63 crores, raids in Delhi’s Karol Bagh for 3.25 crore in and then randomly plugs in an unknown case of Rs 3 lakh to call it a “ridiculously low” amount.

The other topic which the article emphasizes is that I-T officers are under tremendous pressure. This reminded me early days arguments on demonetisation mentioning that bankers are going in acute depression due to extreme workload. Even in government offices, employees have to stretch for a period during final stages of their projects. Do we assume that additional workload on the I-T department and bankers for a few months is so worrisome?

Funny part is, like me, many left-leaning “intellectuals” were also waiting for the article, so that they can use words like “Lawless loonland” to express their hate they so proudly possess:


And highlight one case, without going into details, to make fantastical claims:


Criticism is good, but it should be constructive and objective. Where is objectivity in these bias-laden articles? The article, like many other article, overlooked cases where 50-100 crores of new notes are found and created an opinion piece bases on selective cases. Of course, there is no regulation that forbids people from holding cash, but then one should be able to justify the amount; that part of phrase is completely missing in the article. Why?

By the way, my college curriculum never changed because we “successfully” stopped autocratic decisions by loony professors who thought they could bring reforms with their funny ideas.

Long live revolution! We shall overcome Modi.

Axis Bank becomes target of outrage and ridicule after multiple raids

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Axis Bank becomes target of outrage and ridicule after multiple raids

Since demonetisation, apart from being busy with customers wanting to withdraw or exchange notes, Axis Bank employees have been busy with the tax officials and police officers. In one raid after another, authorities have discovered numerous dubious dealings by the bank, such as:

  • 25th November: Taxmen scrutinized documents and interrogated a few officials at the Kashmere Gate branch in Delhi after two people carrying Rs. 3.5 crores were intercepted by the police.
  • 5th December: Two bank managers were arrested after 3 Kg gold was found in their possession. The ED found that huge amounts were transferred via RTGS to some shell companies including a company where the Director of such a firm was a “petty labourer”.
  • 9th December: Officials in a raid at its Chandni Chowk branch found 44 fake accounts where over 100 crores rupees were deposited.
  • 15th December: In a raid at a branch in Noida, officials found over 60 crores rupees deposited in 20 fake accounts.

Apart from all this, what didn’t help matters was a rumour spreading about the possibility of Axis Bank’s licence getting revoked. There were reports linking the Aam Aadmi party to the bank for receiving dubious donations. Add to all this, it was found out that the bank also had its security breached in a cyber attack this October.

Axis Bank, though, is no stranger to financial wrongdoings or controversies. For example:

  • In 2013, Axis Bank along with banks like ICICI, HDFC was named in a sting operation as being a co-conspirator in a nationwide money laundering exercise. In the aftermath of the expose, the RBI had fined the bank for violating customer identification and anti-money laundering norms.
  • In 2015, a forex scam to the tune of Rs 500 crores was uncovered at Axis Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce. The man in question Manish Jain used to send money to Hong Kong in HSBC Bank and further to China. The money was remitted out of India illegally against the imports that actually never took place. He reportedly had 77 accounts in OBC and 10 in Axis Bank.

With such a coloured history peppered with the latest reports, the bank has received a lot of flak, especially on Twitter, in recent days:

Some pointed out that the latest round of controversy could be the bank’s biggest PR disaster:


Some expressed outrage:


With so many scams emanating from the Bank, many remembered the days of the UPA:


Some guessed how the bank must have been hiring its managers:


Some imagined the banking experience:


This might appear as real news, but it’s from a satirical news handle:


There was a suggestion for the government:


And a suggestion for media houses too:


Realizing that the events had adversely impacted the image of the bank, finally Axis Bank came up with a statement:


However, away from all this outrage and ridicule, the share price of Axis Bank has only witnessed upward growth in the recent days:

Axis Bank share prices in December 2016
In a parallel universe?

If you can decode the relationship between share prices and the controversy, let us know in the comments section!

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