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The Hindu lies to prove that government is not getting support on cashless economy

S. Sudhir Kumar
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The Hindu lies to prove that government is not getting support on cashless economy

“3 CMs opt out of digitisation panel” – screamed the headline on The Hindu today, in a piece that was yet again out to belittle the entire process of demonetisation and its ancillary activities. Further it claimed: “Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members”.

This was reported on Page 13 of The Hindu on December 2, 2016:

The news
The news

Please note the date. December 2, 2016. The story also tells us that “Mr. Naidu leads the Telugu Desam Party, which is a BJP ally, and Mr. Chauhan is from the BJP.” It goes on to tell us Manik Sarkar refused because of the following (emphasis mine):

“Mr. Sarkar was the first to publicly refuse the Centre’s offer. Despite the Union Finance Minister’s insistence that he join the panel, Mr. Sarkar stayed firm. “I opposed the decision because it created a disorder in our economy and also 75 to 77 people have committed suicide.”

75 to 77? Am impressed with this attention to detail. Committed suicide? Doubly impressed with how natural deaths that have nothing to do with either a suicide or demonetization have now been made main stream narrative. For a detailed rebuttal on this topic, please read this article by Rupa Subramanya.

Anyway, let’s come to the date. On December 2, 2016 we are told that “Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members”.

At 4:41 pm, on November 30th, 2016, Niti Aayog announced the setting up of a Committee of CMs with N Chandrababu Naidu as Convenor:



The tweet also linked the pdf document with full details of the scope and charter of this committee formed to help in the “Implementation of digital payment systems in India”.

The committee
The committee

Do you see that there are names of 6 Chief Ministers in the committee formed on November 30th? Do you also see that the names of Nitish Kumar and Manik Sarkar are not even there?

So if we assume that this list by NITI Ayog was published after the Chief Ministers quoted by The Hindu refused, then how come Narayanasamy’s name is still there? And if this list was published before the refusal, why are the names of Nitish Kumar and Manik Sarkar not there?

Do you also see that there are Chief Ministers representing the TDP, BJP, Congresss, BJD and Sikkim Democratic Front, so not just two Chief Ministers as The Hindu’s report claims?

Here’s more. Chandra Babu Naidu has convened a meeting of this committee on December 1st, 2016. This was a video conference meeting. Telugu channel ETV has covered this news in their nightly 9 pm (~11th minute) bulletin. Below is a snapshot taken during that bulletin:

The Meeting
The Meeting

Do you recognize the face? It’s neither Chandrababu (you can see him at the bottom right corner) nor Shivraj Singh Chauhan – the only two Chief Ministers left on the panel as The Hindu claims. The governments of Odisha and Madhya Pradesh were represented too (from the brief report, we didn’t get to see if the CMs were present).

And on the morning of December 2nd, 2016, “India’s National Newspaper since 1878” tells its readers that there are only 2 CMs left out in a panel that had already conducted its first meeting a day before!

I am starting to wonder why the media is making it so easy to counter them! Come on folks, you should make it difficult for us to rebut!

From Indigo Airlines to Indian Army – Mamata Banerjee imagines conspiracies to remove her

OpIndia Staff
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From Indigo Airlines to Indian Army – Mamata Banerjee imagines conspiracies to remove her

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has gone all guns blazing against the Modi government and their demonetisation scheme, has now taken the fight to the next level – where she is blaming the Modi government of getting rid of her using tools like Indigo Airlines and Indian Army.

First her party claimed that there was a conspiracy to kill her after an IndiGo plane, which she was traveling in, hovered over the Kolkata airport due to traffic congestion, and now entire last night there was a drama where she virtually claimed that the Indian Army was planning a coup in her state.

It all started when the army deployed itself at the Vidyasagar Setu toll plaza near her office, Mamata spooked and locked herself in her office refusing to leave until the army withdrew. The situation came into national limelight after Mamata Banerjee took to Twitter to air her grievances against the Army.



She again reiterated her demands, about an hour later.


Things escalated so much that the Army’s Eastern Command, headquartered at Kolkata, had to send out series of tweets stating that it was a routine exercise being carried out not just in West Bengal but in all North Eastern states, and that the whole exercise was being carried out after informing and coordinating with the West Bengal police.


However, Mamata Banerjee accused the Army of misleading people:


This was not only bizarre, but very dangerous situation where a state government was not willing to trust the Indian Army.

As it turns out, the Army was conducting exercises on toll areas to gather statistical data about load carriers that could be made available to the Army in case of a contingency. In an interview to TV channel ABP Ananda, toll manager of Plasit toll plaza about 90 Kms away from Kolkata, had claimed that the exercise had been taking place for the last 3 days at the orders of the NHAI. The interview was aired last night at around 10:00 PM.

Not just that, it turns out that this was a normal routine exercise by the Indian Army that had happened in previous years too at various places, but Mamata Banerjee made it a huge issue this year, claiming that it was an attack on democracy. And obviously, her party declared it signs of Emergency.

The same points were confirmed in a press conference carried out by the Eastern Command of the Indian Army today. Army reiterated that the exercise was an annual activity and was carried out during 19-21 November 2015 at the same locations. This year’s original dates were 27-28 November, but where changed to 30 Nov-2 Dec due to the Bharat Bandh call given by some opposition parties to protest against demonetisation.

Army also produced documents to prove that the State government and police were informed of the exercise and their objection about a particular location was answered:


So the West Bengal government and police were intimated and kept in loop about the routine exercise by the Army. If there indeed was some covert operation planned by the union government to overthrow the state government using the army – which is a ridiculous charge as the union government has the constitutional power to do the same under Article 356 – why would the army inform the state government in advance?

If there was some miscommunication between the state police and the army due to change in dates, is this the right way to express unhappiness over the miscommunication? Is it fair to claim an ‘attack on democracy’ and “Emergency” and dragging the Indian Army?

So it is not really clear what made Mamata Banerjee lose her patience with the Army, so much that she accused them of misleading the people and attacking democracy.

But for Mamata Didi, it seems normal to claim grand conspiracies where everyone is trying to eliminate her.

Two years back, when there was a short-circuit in her hotel room in Malda, she claimed it as a conspiracy to kill her. And who can forget the incident in 2012, when she declared college students as CPM cadre and Maoists because they were putting questions about law and order and safety of women:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx-2SsI4B9U]

Soon she took it up a notch when in an interview to the Washington Post, she claimed that Marxists and Maoists were planning to kill her in a plot financed by North Korea, Venezuela, Hungary and the ISI.

So her conspiracy theories are not new, only that the target has changed. Earlier it were the Maoists, CPM, North Korea, etc. and now it is Narendra Modi.

LOL! When media thought one of Rahul Gandhi’s real tweets was from a hacker

Hemant Bijapurkar
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LOL! When media thought one of Rahul Gandhi’s real tweets was from a hacker

Rahul Gandhi, whose Twitter account got hacked yesterday and resulted in a wide variety of abusive and amusing tweets emanating from his handle, was in for another surprise after one of his real tweets was mistaken to be a hacked one by some media houses.

Hours after the hacked tweets of Rahul Gandhi were deleted and normalcy seemed to return (changed name and bio of the Twitter account restored to the original one late last night itself), the following tweet was posted from the Congress Vice President’s account today morning:


Metaphorically speaking, from all the swamp and mud of the obscene tweets, a beautiful lotus had emerged.

Soon it bloomed and last we checked about 7 hours later, it had received over 2550 retweets and 4085 favorites and was even retweeted by some Congress handles, thus it was the real deal.

But looks like the ever cynical media thought that Rahul Gandhi wasn’t capable of such a magnanimous gesture of embracing all his haters and showering them love. They proceeded to declare his magnanimously profound tweet as another hacked one.

Here are some of the media houses who thought it was another tweet by the hacker:



So we have four prominent media houses or 400 lit fests right there, who think Rahul Gandhi is not capable of coming up with that beautiful prose and benevolent gesture. Mahatma Gandhi used to embrace his haters, why is Rahul Gandhi not capable of doing that? He is a Gandhi too, isn’t he?

Rahul even called his haters beautiful, who apparently can’t see their beauty yet. So we ask the media houses who thought this was a hacked tweet, did they think that the hacker was calling all Congress supporters beautiful but full of hatred? Congress party will not like it!

If Congress needs to under cyber security better, Media needs to know the character of all of celebrity Tweeters better after this incident. They shouldn’t go by stereotypes that makes Rahul Gandhi a simpleton who can’t make profound statements. Someday Arvind Kejriwal’s account might get hacked and they will think everything is alright.

Also, what were they thinking when they thought that the hacker, who had been posting abusive messages, had suddenly became philosophical? Did they think the hacker to be a split personality who switches between Raghu Ram from Roadies to Alok Nath in a movie doing kanyadaan?

Nonetheless, even after over 7 hours, the media houses haven’t realized their mistake and have kept their tweets intact. Though if you find any of the above tweets deleted or unavailable, do let us know in the comment box or on our Twitter or Facebook pages. One of our staff has all the screenshots 😉

Finance Ministry’s poorly drafted clarification, aided by media spin, leads to rumours of “surgical strike” on Gold

Gaurav
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Finance Ministry’s poorly drafted clarification, aided by media spin, leads to rumours of “surgical strike” on Gold

BJP and by extension the Indian Government has earned a reputation of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on umpteen occasions all thanks to its woeful communication. And today, in the midst of demonetisation, it has done it once again. Worse, this is not a victory yet, and is already being converted into a defeat.

Ever since the scheme of scrapping old notes was announced, social media was rife with all sorts of rumours. We at OpIndia.com had to conduct multiple “surgical strikes” on these rumours to kill any chance of a flare-up. One such rumour was the purported move of the Government to soon target gold held by households, after it went after cash. There were various variations of this rumour but the in short, all tried to create panic among the average citizen about his or her gold.

So the Government of India, through its Ministry of Finance, tried to lay to rest one such rumour, but managed to start an even worse rumour. ANI News, tweeted out the following information, which was soon latched on to by many media houses:

The news
The news

The most problematic part of the above was the last tweet, which reported the restrictions on the amount of Gold which would not be seized. Soon we had news items like the below:


So was this the truth? Obviously not. Most media reports missed out on stating that these limits for seizure were applicable ONLY in case of Income Tax raids. This was itself clear in the Finance Ministry’s press release, based on which the media had reported the above. But was this a new rule which the Ministry had announced? Not really. These limits were in fact from an instruction which dated back to 1994. And there in lies the entire problem.

The Finance Ministry was only trying to quell rumours that there was no new provision regarding chargeability of tax on jewellery in the Taxation Laws (Second Amendment) Bill, 2016 passed this week in the Lok Sabha. The clarification went on to reiterate the changes proposed which are already well know. Till here it was all hunky dory.

After this, the clarification went on to reiterate existing laws and rules relating to Gold and from here it went downhill. Unnecessarily, this old law which is relevant only in case of Income Tax raids, was mentioned. The clarification did mention that it was applicable only in case of raids, but there was absolutely no need to mention this in a press release going out to the entire country.

Income Tax Raids are generally a very rare phenomenon and definitely do not concern 99.99% of the population. Worse, it revealed that rules made with the sensibilities of 1994 in mind, were being applied in 2016.

Once the Government had opened the gates, the media entered and made a hash of the entire clarification and reported a completely different picture. Self Goal: Scorer media, assisted and created by Finance Ministry.

Update: The Finance Ministry has released another communication which now clearly states that “there is no limit on holding of gold jewellery or ornaments by anybody provided it is acquired from explained sources of income including inheritance” and that the limits pertain to only cases of Income Tax raids.

“Hacking” nightmare continues? Now Indian National Congress’ website defaced

OpIndia Staff
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“Hacking” nightmare continues? Now Indian National Congress’ website defaced

Yesterday Rahul Gandhi’s account was “hacked” with some weird messages being posted from his account. No private or confidential data was revealed but it was clear someone had been playing around. There is still some doubt whether this was a genuine hacking or a plan to trash Digital India and demonetisation’s push for a cashless economy.

Today, we saw the Indian National Congress’s twitter account compromised, with the hacker again posting some weird and abusive messages. Some were even copied from the lyrics of a song:


Oddly, the “hacking” ended just about in time for Parliament to start, and things were back to normal with the account:


Now, the “hackers” have even defaced the website of Indian National Congress. The official Twitter account (the un-hacked version) of the Indian National Congress puts its website address as www.inc.in. But when we checked this website, this was what we got:

The "hacked" site
The “hacked” site at 3.30 pm on Dec 1 2016

We thought that maybe the domain registration had expired. But on checking records, that was not the case. A functional website was present on the domain was confirmed from Internet Archive finder site, which records older versions of webpages:

The original site
The original site as seen on 28th November 2016

When the Congress party’s official Twitter handle (@INCIndia) was hacked this morning, the hacker had claimed to be in possession of emails from Congress’ official domain address (@inc.in) and had threatened to release them. If true, is this a natural progression before we actually see the emails?

Aeroplane hovers due to traffic congestion, TMC claims conspiracy to kill Mamata Banerjee

OpIndia Staff
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Aeroplane hovers due to traffic congestion, TMC claims conspiracy to kill Mamata Banerjee

A new controversy has erupted regarding how West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee’s plane was low on fuel and was not allowed to land for 30 min. This issue could date back to her making a statement in New Delhi on 28th November that whether she dies or lives, she would remove PM Modi from Indian politics.

Just four days after this, her party the TMC cried that the conspiracy to eliminate the CM was already underway after it alleged that her flight from Patna back to Kolkata was made to circle around 30 minutes over Kolkata airspace even though it was precariously low on fuel. State Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim who was the co-passenger in that flight was quoted by TOI as,

“This is nothing but a conspiracy to kill our chief minister as she has raised voice against demonetization and is touring the country to organize a mass movement against the anti-people decision.”

He further alleged that even though the pilot kept asking for permission to land he was repeatedly put on hold by the ATC officials.

Indigo today came out with a statement that Mamata Banerjee’s flight had more than the minimum fuel requirement and that it did a perfectly normal landing. Also the low fuel report emerged after the Kolkata ATC misunderstood the pilot. Indigo’s whole statement read as,

‘IndiGo flight 6E 342 from Patna and Kolkata made a normal landing at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday (November 30). The flight was kept on hold for landing due air traffic congestion at Kolkata. The pilot operating 6E-342 had advised the ATC that he has 8 minutes of extra holding fuel over Kolkata (destination) before commencing diversion to the planned alternate. However, this information was misunderstood by the air traffic controller who assumed that the aircraft had only 8 minutes of total fuel left. The misinterpretation of the information by ATC controller led ATC to instruct fire engines and ambulances to be stationed at Kolkata airport. We would like to clarify – IndiGo captain at no stage declared a fuel priority or an emergency. Subsequently, the airplane made a normal landing at Kolkata airport 8.40 pm (Delayed by an hour due to congestion). The fuel on arrival was more than the minimum diversion fuel. There has been no violation or breech of any regulatory requirement in the above mentioned scenario.’

However the controversy looked far from being over after the TMC refusing to back down caused an uproar in the Rajya Sabha.


As a response to all this, Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha today told the parliament that a probe by the DGCA was underway to as to how not one but three flights, Mamata’s, Spice Jet’s and Air India’s were reported to have been running on low fuel, while stressing that at no point the lives of passengers in those planes in any danger.

Also as put out in this article, the main reason the flight was made to circle in the first place was because of congestion issues and TMC in what may be a blatant case of VVIPism demanded that because the Bengal CM was on the Indigo flight, it should have received a priority landing.

Who hacked Twitter accounts of Congress and Rahul Gandhi? Options are…

OpIndia Staff
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Who hacked Twitter accounts of Congress and Rahul Gandhi? Options are…

Lasts night Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was allegedly hacked and some obscene comments were posted from the account. Congress leaders and their friendly journalists immediately linked it to the cashless economy and Digital India. The issue was even raised in the Parliament today.

Even as the Congress support system was coming up with rather ludicrous arguments over why this incident was an indictment of digital transactions, the official Twitter account of the Party also appeared hacked as it started sending out weird tweets for around half an hour this morning.

These two hacking incidents one after the other left people guessing about the identity of the hacker(s). As of now, there are three options widely being considered:

1. Disgruntled Member: Since both Rahul Gandhi’s and the Party’s official accounts were compromised, people are guessing that it could be someone from the team that had access to both the accounts i.e. some employee in the IT cell or social media team of Congress, entrusted with managing both the Twitter accounts.

The fact that all is not well with the social media strategy of Congress came to light in May this year when one of the most influential Congress supporting Twitter handles revealed that he/she was ill-treated by the party and kicked out despite being loyal:

Congress volunteer abused by the party
Congress – a divided house?

The fact that party doesn’t secure its digital assets well was also evident last year when its Delhi unit’s official website went offline because the member having access to it was reportedly denied ticket by the party:


So if this was another case of some party member or volunteer going rogue, the party needs to set its house in order. It would be very juvenile to raise the issue in parliament or to question cashless transactions – both of which they did – just because they are not smart enough to secure their digital assets.

2. External Hacker: If it was not done by someone who is part of the Congress party, maybe it was done by a professional hacker or a group of hackers such as Anonymous?

Although hacks by Anonymous usually don’t follow the path of sending out abusive and obscene tweets, some tweets during the period when Congress party’s account was compromised, hinted at the involvement of a group that was similar to Anonymous. For example this tweet:


Other reason to suspect a professional hacker or a group’s involvement was a tweet sent out from the compromised Congress handle, where the hacker threatened to dump all official emails of the party in public. This is similar to what hackers like Anonymous do:

Congress email dump
Bigger controversy to come?

If India Today journalist Rahul Kanwal is to be believed, Twitter has virtually denied that their systems were compromised and they appear to be blaming the Congress email system for the security breach i.e. the hacker had access to official emails of Congress, which is why he was able to reset the passwords and log into these official accounts:


If this is indeed true, we are to set witness a desi controversy similar to John Podesta’s email leaks that we saw during the US Presidential elections. The hacker has claimed that it would be released around Christmas. Let’s see if there indeed was an external hacker.

3. Planned Drama by Congress: Then there is the final theory that this was all done by the Congress party to manufacture controversy around the government’s push for the cashless economy and Digital India.

The theory, captured in the image contained in the tweet below, claims that the theory of “disgruntled employee” was spread by friendly journalists of Congress to hide the fact that it was all planned by the party:


The theory has some credence because if it indeed was a malicious hack, as the party claims, they should have approached Twitter and asked them to temporarily take the accounts off or at least take away the “verified” badges (blue ticks) off till the party got control of the accounts back.

But the party appeared more interested in bashing the cashless economy and Digital India than getting control of the accounts back. And interestingly, they got control of their party’s official account back just in time today:


So what is the truth? We will know after the investigations are over, as the party reportedly has filed a police complaint. Meanwhile, you can take your pick among the above options, or add more options in the comments section below.

Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account hacked, Congress uses it to attack Digital India

OpIndia Staff
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Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account hacked, Congress uses it to attack Digital India

On Wednesday night, the official Twitter account of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi started sending out weird tweets, many of them abusive and obscene.


It is not for the first time that some high profile Twitter account was hacked, the most notorious being the account of news agency Associated Press being hacked, which falsely tweeted about an attack on the White House. That even caused brief panic in the markets.

Recently in the run up to the US Presidential elections, Twitter account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta was hacked. There have been many such instances when celebrities or organisations have been targeted by hackers.

Back in India, Rajdeep Sardesai had, in all probability, falsely claimed about his Twitter account being hacked in April this year when he sent out obscene abuses to many users, while recently government’s Chief Economic Adviser’s Twitter account was reportedly hacked, which again we think was more of a case of some malware than hacking.

Basically, hacking of Twitter accounts or emails is not a rare phenomenon. Most of the times it happens due to a user not being alert and aware enough to secure his or her account. Apart from using a strong password, people should use mobile authentication to login and avoid clicking suspicious links. There are many other things you can do such as these to secure yourself online.

One can blame a particular platform if there is mass hacking and credentials of users are leaked in bulk, as has happened on occasions with different websites, but hacking of a single user’s account is more an indictment of that particular user rather than of the platform or the system.

Therefore, if everyone’s Twitter account is safe, but Rahul Gandhi’s account gets hacked, people have to ask the team handling Rahul Gandhi’s online presence rather than attacking Twitter or by extension attacking the digital world.

However, this simple fact was lost, or deliberately missed, by supporters and leaders of the Congress party, who tried to attack everyone and everything for the hacking, except Rahul Gandhi’s office.

These leaders and supporters blamed BJP, Digital India, cashless economy, and even demonetisation because Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was not secure enough. Look at some of such tweets:


So where these tweets out of political naivety knavery or digital illiteracy?

Or was it all planned? You decide.


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Compulsory National Anthem verdict by SC: it started with Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham!

OpIndia Staff
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Compulsory National Anthem verdict by SC: it started with Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham!

Sometime in early 2002, Mr. Shyam Narayan Chouksey, a retired engineer in Bhopal went to watch the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, which starred big names like Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, and Hrithik Roshan.

There is a scene in the movie where Shahrukh Khan’s son, at his school function in London, sings the National Anthem. As soon as the national anthem was sung by Sharukhs’ son (the character in the movie), Mr. Chouksey stood up in respect.

But he was shocked to see that no one else was joining him. In fact, people around him objected to him standing up as he was blocking their view and interrupting their movie watching experience. Some even mocked him. Chouksey was crestfallen at this “insult” meted out to the national anthem.

Shocked and saddened that fellow Indians were not respecting the anthem, he went to the Manager of the theatre, Jyoti Theatre, and complained to him about the incident, but the manager couldn’t have punished the people. So he staged a ‘satyagrah’ outside the theatre to create awareness among people.

He put banners and posters and registered his protest, but people were still not willing to stand for the national anthem during the movie. So went to the local administration, state police, and finally to the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

And guess what. The High Court banned Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and ordered its producers – Yash Johar and Karan Johar – to delete the national anthem scene as people were unknowingly disrespecting the nation anthem due to not standing up during the movie. Court even asked producers to pay for Chouksey’s legal expenses.

The producers ran to the Supreme Court, which set aside the High Court’s order citing the rule that it was not mandatory for viewers to stand up for the national anthem if it was played as part of a film or documentary being screened.

This judgment didn’t impress Mr. Shyam Narayan Chouksey, who decided that he will keep fighting to make people aware of their duties and make them respect the national anthem. He filed a review petition claiming that the issue of national anthem being commercially exploited by film producers remained open.

Mr. Chouksey has been knocking at the doors of justice ever since. Not just movies, he went on to include in his petition, television shows, events, and other possible cases where there could be disrespect to the national anthem.

Last month, he could get the Supreme Court to issue notice to the union government regarding the same. In his Public Interest Litigation, he had sought the apex court to direct the government to take appropriate steps to stop disrespect and abuse of the national anthem.

And today, he could get the Supreme Court to declare that playing national anthem before every movie was mandatory and people will have to stand up in respect.

Not only that, the court agreed with him and declared that national anthem cannot be introduced or used as part of any entertainment program or variety show. So looks like if Karan Johar decides to remake Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, he will have to do away with that scene that started it all.

Rajasthan govt signs MOU with NGO having hidden agenda of spreading Christianity.

OpIndia Staff
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Rajasthan govt signs MOU with NGO having hidden agenda of spreading Christianity.

As you visit the website of the NGO World Vision India, you are welcomed with full page photographs of underprivileged kids smiling, one wearing a school uniform and other having a plate full of food in his hand. Both these images include a passionate message to sponsor a kid for making his life better. Plus there are options of crowdfunding various survival needs of the poor kids and grown ups alike, programs to rescue a child, fight HIV and AIDS, sending kids to school and more.

While all these paint a very rosy picture of an organisation making it look like the one which genuinely cares about making the lives of those struggling everyday to survive in the harsh realities of the world easier, the Rajasthan government came under attack online after people were irked at the fact that the government choose to sign an MOU with World Vision. The critics of this alleged, under all this compassion and save the children message, Wold Vision has a hidden evangelist agenda mainly funded by various church groups from around the world. Before we go into this aspect of World vision lets look at some of the reactions critical of the government’s move:


The MOU was specifically signed between the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) department of the State Government’s Women and Child Development Ministry and World Vision India in order to curb severe acute malnutrition among kids. Before going ahead, lets look at the exact role the NGO is expected to fulfill. The NGO is expected to assign a nutrition expert to every 5-10 Anganwadi centers who will provide support to the existing Anganwadi helpers, furthermore the NGO will provide infrastructure like salter scales, bathroom scales and IEC materials. Looking at the support required to be provided, as putout by Shefali Vaidya, it does’t seem to look like a job which an Indian NGO would not have been able to do.

Finally coming to the NGO itself. This is how the NGO describes itself at various places:

The controversies in world vision global include, sending funds intended for developmental works in Gaza to Hamas, grass root level corruption and more. The extent of influence Christian organisations have on World Vision can be gauged by the fact that back in 2014 they came out with a policy to hire Gay-Christians in same-sex marriages and just two days later retracted ‘under immense financial pressure and criticism from gatekeepers on the evangelical right” as reported here.

Coming to India, World Vision’s Chennai office received the maximum amount of foreign funding among all NGO’s amounting to about 239 crores in 2015. Plus coming to it having an Evangelist agenda, as written here in this Huffpost article, the writer an evangelist student then, who once sponsored a kid in India so that he/she could go to a ‘Christian school’ and talks about the influence religion has in its functioning.

While there haven’t been outright incidents of the organisation engaging in outright proselytizing, they also categorically deny about engaging in the same. But looking at above instances the fact that there would be a Christian influence on the Rajasthan kids which in the long run might resemble mental conversion to a different set of ideas might not be very inaccurate. The matter becomes complicated even further when one finds out that a BJP government which is dubbed as having conservative views when it comes to such issues is openly collaborating with NGO even when its own central government is cracking down on foreign backed NGO’s  having dubious funding.

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