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The fixed interview of the decade: Rajdeep talks to “Tigress” Sonia

Hemant Bijapurkar
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The fixed interview of the decade: Rajdeep talks to “Tigress” Sonia

THE BUILD UP:

As one tuned into India Today, the screens flashed ‘Biggest interview of the decade’. Sonia Gandhi was giving her first interview in many years and she was giving it to Rajdeep Sardesai, their consulting editor. To say Sonia Gandhi has been reclusive when it comes to overtly dealing with the fourth estate would be an understatement with only an address to the nation being some form of in front of camera communication.

Many viewers speculated the possible questions which would have been asked. Many probably created a wish list of the questions they would want asked encompassing topics like Demonetisation, the Surgical strike on Pakistan, the separatist protests in Kashmir, the Congress Party’s poor performance in recent elections, Robert Vadra so on. And so it began, the interview was set in the Swaraj Bhavan formerly owned by Motilal Nehru which was the birth place of Indira Gandhi.

THE INTERVIEW:

The first question thrown by Mr. Sardesai, ‘When did you first meet Indira Gandhi?’ looked a bit odd considering Sonia Gandhi was the one getting interviewed, but could have been plausible considering the proximity of the interview’s date with that of Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversary. It was followed by what was Indira like at home, then what influence did she (Indira) have on her (Sonia’s) politics and life. Flags probably were beginning to be raised in viewers mind about the arc of the interview.

Then he asked Sonia about the allegations that she, Indira, and the rest promoted dynasty politics. Finally it looked like Rajdeep was done easing Sonia in and real question were starting to prop up but again he went, ‘what are the central ideas and values of Indira’, the first response to it by Sonia was, many might have guessed, ‘Secularism’.

One thing led to another and Rajdeep managed to ask as to was Indira practising vote bank politics. If not already clear, Sonia’s response brought the whole interview into perspective. She responded, ‘We are discussing Mrs. Gandhi, and I don’t like to discuss politics’. At another point too when Sonia sensed Rajdeep was drifting away from her set rules, she used the same rebuke.

There surely have been instances where the questions in an interview appeared fixed but in this case the whole topic was pre-decided and no attempt was made to keep this fact under wraps. It was an eulogy to Indira Gandhi, in the words of her daughter-in-law, being asked ultra-soft-ball questions by a friendly face. And all the ‘interview of the decade’ looked like offering was underarm full tosses!

In short, questions were asked to Sonia about Indira and the various aspects of her life which Sonia Gandhi remembered with surprising clarity. Rajdeep’s tone and body language remained extremely docile, supportive and probably sycophantic, completely unlike the one during Smriti Irani’s interview.

It wasn’t the first time Mr Sardesai had interviewed Mrs Gandhi; he did another interview with her back in 2005, when there there were real questions like her reaction to corruption in politics, allegations of her being the real power behind Manmohan Singh, etc. though the tone still remained the same. One thing which remained EXACTLY the same was Rajdeep’s admiration for Sonia, who he said “fought like a Tigress”:

Much like he used to keep saying Rahul Gandhi has “come of age”.

THE AFTERMATH:

So was the interview only agreed upon after Sonia Gandhi was assured of being asked questions only regarding Indira Gandhi? Did it not violate the “moral compass” of the profession he strives so hard to follow?

Rajdeep Sardesai' tweet

Another thing that struck us was Sardesai repeating ‘I ask you this because’ after some questions, did Sardesai desperately tried to justify his logic in order to escape Sonia Gandhi’s displeasure for asking some rare questions that did not follow the pre-decided path?

Was this Sonia Gandhi interview a part of a grander plan of the Congress to promote Indira Gandhi and her image so to benefit the party in upcoming elections? A grand white-wash of Indira Gandhi, and maybe promoting Priyanka Gandhi as the modern Indira Gandhi?

As for the reactions we turned to twitter, many dug up Rajdeep’s old tweets to show him the mirror:


One eminent journalist though gave her approval


People’s rebuttal


And finally, someone at home might not be very happy after such easy questions were asked, as evident by her past record of keeping stringent standards in interviews:


Congress and AAP Social Media supporters gang up again to spread panic about new currency notes

Aditya (reviewero)
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Congress and AAP Social Media supporters gang up again to spread panic about new currency notes

As expected, ever since the 8th November demonetisation move kicked in, the usual suspects are having sleepless nights. The list of hoaxes around the demonetisation scheme haven’t stopped coming in as the anti Modi brigade queues up to cash in on the uncertainty after the move.

The photoshop machines have been working over time printing new hoaxes faster than RBI can print new currency notes forcing OpIndia.com to dispel those rumours at the same rate .

The latest mob attack being on the new currency notes. The mobsters after having tried all ways possible to discredit the humble currency notes have now moved on to play the time tested, hardest to dispel, photoshopping routine for their propaganda.

In the latest trick to confuse and paralyse masses, photoshopped images of the new currency is being circulated. Some of these pictures are of the Rs 500 notes where they claim they received new notes from ATM which are only half printed while others claim they got Rs 2000 notes which were misprinted.

Just days before this, a hoax of an incorrect Hindi language print on the Rs 2000 note was made viral by the same group, with suggestion that the Rs 2000 note was printed in hurry and that demonetisation should be rolled back because the Government and RBI are ill prepared.

After all the hoaxes being busted on this site alone, the latest attempt was hundreds of Congress and AAP affiliated handles suddenly claiming to have withdrawn washed off Rs 500 notes. Here are two such geniuses:

whatsapp-image-2016-11-21-at-4-13-53-pm

This chap has already deleted his tweets which were retweeted over 1000 times and has now moved on to the next hoax which is already debunked (note the hashtag):

captureshandilya

Two more tweets claiming the 500 note half printed, one of them mentioning it’s a Whatsapp forward. These were deleted later too:

whatsapp-image-2016-11-21-at-4-14-31-pm

There is no proof that these notes actually exist other than the deleted tweets based on Whatsapp forwards. The notes clearly look badly photoshoped. The other rumour being spread is that the Rs 2000 notes having a lot of mis-prints with hundreds of handles tweeting about it.

whatsapp-image-2016-11-21-at-4-14-21-pm

whatsapp-image-2016-11-21-at-4-14-10-pm

It’ll be hard to say with 100% surety if these are fake or real. But considering how hard the rumour mills are working (look at some other rumours like SBI waves off Mallya loan, Kejriwal passes thief’s suicide as innocent citizen committing suicide because of demonetisation and top 10 rumours about demonetisation) it will be foolish to not wait till facts are clear.

Some error rate in currency printing is but natural and banks replace these notes. RBI has made errors before and has come forward and issued clarifications earlier. But for now this remains unconfirmed too

unconfirmed

Meanwhile the assault on the new currency continues unabated with you-tubers making them pass through stress tests usually reserved for nuclear bunkers and it looks they are holding up nicely, you can relax and appreciate the crispiness of your new notes.

Revealed: The man who will replace Arnab Goswami on Times Now

OpIndia Staff
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Revealed: The man who will replace Arnab Goswami on Times Now

Editor-in-Chief of English TV news channel Times Now, Arnab Goswami, had resigned from the channel earlier this month. Arnab had virtually single-handedly taken Times Now to a position where it was the undisputed TRP leader in the English news market. Obviously, when it was revealed that he would be leaving, it came as big shock, and everybody had 2 questions:

1. What next for Arnab?

2. What next for Times Now?

In this report, we had tried to guess what Arnab could be upto next. And now it has been revealed what Times Now would do without Arnab.

Some were wondering whether Times Now would follow the route of Times of India, which is much softer on many issues. Of late, Arnab had strictly disassociated himself with other Times Group brands, especially Times of India. He announced that he didn’t support the Aman Ki Asha campaign by the group. So this would fit the narrative.

Social media today was also rife with rumours that Rajdeep Sardesai would be roped in at Times Now. This was probably based on the fact the his wife Sagarika Ghose is already with Times of India and now the entire Times Group could be their fiefdom. It would also go along with the thought that Times Now was seeking to re-position itself.

This of course would have led to Times Now losing a massive (if not  the entire) chunk of their viewer base. While most other English language channels followed the unwritten leftist-liberal rules, Times Now had broken them, and a Rajdeep would have just ensured that Times Now would have become just another channel.

But now, these rumours have been quashed as none other than the Editor of News-X has revealed that Rahul Shivshankar who was an anchor and news editor at News-X would now move to Times Now:


Image result for rahul shivshankar

This will probably be an astute move for both Times Now and Rahul Shivshankar. First of all, Shivshankar has modelled his approach to be very similar to Arnab. Both of them are very aggressive and tow similar editorial lines. So this would seem a natural promotion for him.

Times Now also seems to have realised that they have created a brand positioning for themselves, which cannot and should be changed overnight. Hence they have chosen Shivshankar, to possibly continue the tone and tenor of the channel, as managed by Arnab. It is also interesting to note that Shivshankar was a former Times Now employee and had worked along side Arnab.

Shivshankar though will have huge shoes to fill since Arnab was the sole eyeball-winner on Times Now and it remains to be seen if the audience will continue to be faithful to Times Now. Also, News X isn’t really anywhere close to the “Gold standard” in journalism. So will he be as credible a face as Arnab Goswami to Times Now’s millions of viewers? At least till Arnab starts his new venture, Times Now will hope that Shivshankar manages to catch the pulse of the nation.

After surgical strike on unaccounted cash, next attack on undeclared gold and real estate?

Nitin Rivaldo
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After surgical strike on unaccounted cash, next attack on undeclared gold and real estate?

Although the term “Black money” creates an impression of a person hoarding unaccounted hard cash, the truth is slightly different. “Black money” or unaccounted wealth is now not only stored in Cash but also in Gold and Real Estate. One major criticism of the demonetisation scheme is – Oh, the cash component of black money is minor. Most of it is in Gold and Real Estate.

So is the demonetisation scheme unwarranted?

Nope. You had to start somewhere. What-about Gold, What-about benami properties, cannot be the rationale to counter a measure to tackle other forms of ill-gotten wealth. And cash is the only practical starting point from the point of view of maximum compliance.

Could you have gone after gold first or Benami property first? If Yes how? How would you make sure that people suddenly started declaring all undeclared and unaccounted Gold and Benami Property and clean up the mess in 50 days? If some genius has a plan, I would have happy to hear it!

On the contrary, the current plan follows a logical path. It started with IDS and now is the turn of demonetization to clean up unaccounted cash. And now one can go after other form of assets.

Imagine that in February if Modi says – declare all your Gold that you bought without bills and make it white by paying 50% penalty on the value.

Do you think people would do it? I think Yes. For they would have seen what happened to the cash that was not declared. People were forced to burn it, or they faced risk of facing IT notices and paying massive penalty.

There will be fear that what if Modi comes out with some scheme in future where the government could open all your bank lockers to check for undeclared gold? The risk of losing it all will force people to declare those assets to the government during the first declaration drive, if they do it.

The key is the crooks need to be gone after with a carrot and stick approach, and the stick needs to be a real stick, not some imaginary hypothetical twig. Can you imagine the response the IDS scheme would have got if there were clear indications that post the IDS scheme, the Government will bring in demonetisation? Those people who did not opt for it now know that the threats issued during the IDS scheme are not hollow. And this will be playing on their minds, and it is precisely this which needs to be tapped further, to extract the harder-to-crack assets such as Gold and Benami properties.

It’s not easy to get rid of gold or benami properties so easily. You can’t sell your gold because you won’t easily find a buyer who is willing to buy it without any paperwork. Also, there could already be a cash squeeze in the market because of demonetisation.

So people will be stuck with their gold or other undeclared assets in that situation. Those who declare first can save some of it in IDS kind of scheme. Those who don’t risk losing all of it. So when the government comes up with another amnesty scheme targeted especially at gold or real estate, trust that the conversion rate will be better next time.

Gold and Real estate are black money reserves. They are sort of a Savings Account of black money, while Cash is the current account of black money (not saying all cash is black money). Government has gone after the current account of black money. Savings accounts will be the next.

The Coldplay concert finally took place, but here are some who tried to stop it

Srikanth Ramakrishnan
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The Coldplay concert finally took place, but here are some who tried to stop it

British rock band Coldplay’s much awaited appearance at a concert this month in Mumbai had run into some trouble recently thanks to some fringe outfits.

The concert, announced earlier in September grabbed media attention when rumours surfaced claiming that tickets would be priced between Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 5 lakh. Later on, the organisers of the event, Global Citizen confirmed that a majority of the tickets would be available free of cost while around one-fifth of them would be available for sale at rather high prices, intended for VIPs. Global Citizen, on their website, describes itself as a “Social Action Platform” to solve social problems with an aim to end Global Poverty by 2030.

The concert held on 19 November in Mumbai, featured Coldplay as the lead act. Interspersed with the music, were global leaders, social workers, celebrities  and business magnates, promoting the 3 sustainable development goals chosen by India, as well as pledging crores of rupees in support to these social causes. Global Citizen’s CEO Hugh Evans, states that the concert is a result of meetings between Coldplay’s lead vocalist Chris Martin (also GC’s Creative Director) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, the run up to the concert was not smooth. It attracted opposition from two political parties, and the shocking fact is that neither the Shiv Sena nor the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena were among those.

Spokesperson of the Congress, (which has been reduced to a fringe outfit electorally), Sanjay Nirupam, who had termed the Surgical Strike conducted by the Indian Army “fake”, had complained to the State Election Commission asking for the concert to be scrapped, citing it violated the Code of Conduct for the Upcoming Civic Elections.

He alleged that the BJP-led Government of Maharashtra, which had given a 75% concession to the organisers to hold the event at MMRDA Grounds in Bandra-Kurla Complex. He claimed that the BJP was using this for political gains by generating goodwill among the public. The Congress’ ally, the NCP too chimed in asking for the concert asking for it to be postponed.

Nirupam, and his associates in the INC and NCP however, were wrong. The Election Code of Conduct, which came into effect after polling dates were announced on 17 October is not valid for the districts of Mumbai (City and Suburban) and Thane. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) comprising of seven municipal corporations, mostly within these three districts, is set to go for polls only in early 2017.

Perhaps some in the party realised that it was a futile fight, which is why Congress leader Milind Deora tweeted out stating that it was “unwise” to demand any ban on the concert. Eventually, Deora even took to the stage at the concert, with Poonam Mahajan and Aditya Thakeray, to spread the word for the social causes taken up.

One may wonder if the Congress planned to rake this controversy up only to blame the BJP government later, if the concert was delayed or cancelled. In the wake of the recent controversy surrounding the release of Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, any delay or cancellation of the concert would have reflected very badly on the Fadnavis government.

Global Citizen had further stated that it planned to organise more such events for the next 15 years with this year being the first one. A ban or rescheduling of the event would have sent out an incorrect message that India is not the right destination for global concerts. Maybe Congress leaders like Sanjay Nirupam had this in mind?

Another fringe group that targeted the event was the Aam Aadmi Party. Party convener for Maharashtra, Anjali Damania went on to file a PIL in the Bombay High Court. Why? The Tax exemption granted by the Fadnavis government. But the exemption was justified as the event was of charitable nature, for majority of the tickets were given out free.

Despite such hurdles, the concert took place. There were usual rants about why PM Modi sent out a message by a few social media commentators, but in the end, India could host an event of international standards.

Rajdeep Sardesai places his prejudices over ethics of journalism

OpIndia Staff
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Rajdeep Sardesai places his prejudices over ethics of journalism

Rajdeep Sardesai’s personal views for Modi are no more a secret. From remote villages in Bihar to posh corridors of Madison Square, Rajdeep — as a preacher, as a boxer, as a saint, as an anchor — has left no stone unturned to express his visceral hatred for Modi. India, as a democracy, has always tried to protect personal beliefs and opinions of individuals. After 2014, it was feared that Modi government will strangulate freedom of expression, but ironically, the attacks on Modi didn’t attenuate, rather they grew manifold.

However, Rajdeep is much more than an individual opinion holder; he is an opinion maker. He heads and has headed top-positions of media houses which act as eyes and ears of the nation. With such pivotal accountability, one is expected to act prudent and responsible. Sadly, Rajdeep differs to maintain that, again and again.

As expected, Rajdeep has been very critical of the demonetisation scheme from the first day. By the time Modi finished his speech, Rajdeep tweeted his scepticism:


Since then, his concerns and criticisms have remained intact in various forms. From subjugation of lower classes to sufferings of patient undergoing medical emergency, his tweets have covered a wide spectrum of narratives.


A recent article published in Navhind Times, a Goan daily, claims that Sardesai pointed out that sixty per cent of the country’ population has been troubled by  demonetisation. Sardesai also added that few media houses are providing biased news on it.Sardesai

Interestingly, on-the-field reactions to Rajdeep’s queries are substantially different from tweets published by Rajdeep. The following video demonstrates how Rajdeep was trolled when he tried to nudge people on the “inconvenience” factor. Contrary to the views published in the Navhind Times, Rajdeep was contradicted by all his interviewees, who expressed that they are willing to take the inconvenience.


If these were the responses received by Rajdeep, he should answer how did he arrive at the 60 per cent figure.

If these were the responses received by Rajdeep, he must answer where is the objectivity gone from his journalism.

If these were the responses received by Rajdeep, he must answer why is he mixing facts with prejudices.

It is also odd to note that Rajdeep chose to refer to a news report in an unknown Gujarati publication in April 2016, which, as he claimed, knew about the move of scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes eight months before the announcement. It is odd because, India Today, the same organisation where Rajdeep works, had debunked this here. They revealed that the “news” was published on 1st April 2016, also known as April Fool’s day, and the editor of the daily, Kirit Gantara himself confirmed that it was a prank, adding that “It is just a coincidence that the Modi government took such a decision. It’s a sheer coincidence.”

The Press Council of India states that the fundamental objective of journalism is to serve the people with news, views, comments and information on matters of public interest in a fair, accurate, unbiased, sober and decent manner.

In fact, Rajdeep knows the answer, he always knew it.


 

Kejriwal sinks to new low – shows picture of dead robber, claims he is innocent citizen

OpIndia Staff
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Kejriwal sinks to new low – shows picture of dead robber, claims he is innocent citizen

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is desperate to prove that Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive is causing widespread death and destruction in India. He has been repeating an exaggerated number of 55 deaths, linking all of them to demonetisation even though relatives of the dead claim otherwise.

A couple of days back he called a BBC journalist dishonest because he cross-questioned Kejriwal’s claim of 55 deaths. Today, he went a step ahead and spread a repulsive rumour about a young man who committed suicide because he couldn’t get cash from bank.

This is what he tweeted:

Rumour mongering by Arvind Kejriwal
Is the worst of Arvind Kejriwal still to come?

Even looking at the picture itself, one could sense that something was terribly wrong, and it can’t be what Kejriwal claimed to be. Can a person commit suicide in full public view in a public place like a commercial bank while no one around comes to stop him?

But when you are driven by an agenda and are full of hate, you become blind to facts. This is what happened with Kejriwal.

The picture that he had tweeted was of a bank robber who had hanged himself in the wee hours of Saturday after police surrounded him. The incident happened in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh and was reported by many media organizations such as Dainik Bhaskar, Nai Duniya, Navbharat Times, Times of India, and ABP News among others.

The robber, identified as a man named Dharmendra Patel, is reported to be a history-sheeter and has been arrested in such cases earlier too. He was trapped inside the bank by local villagers who brought down the shutter from outside while he was trying to steal cash and valuables kept inside the bank. His activities are also reported to have been captured by a CCTV camera.

This fact was pointed out to Kejriwal by many on Twitter, such as the following tweet, but Kejriwal didn’t correct himself or offered any apology for spreading rumour and panic. The above tweet was on his Twitter page at the time of filing this report (which is more than an hour after Kejriwal tweeted):



Although Arvind Kejriwal had been spreading misinformation in “is is true?” style for long, looks like now he has decided to spread lies and rumours just like his supporters do. For example, this Facebook page, apparently managed by AAP supporters, spread the same lie about the above incident.

Such irresponsible and ignorant behaviour by the AAP supremo confirms what the Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had told about him yesterday:


But does Kejriwal care?

Demonetisation drive – some positive outcomes in the short term too

OpIndia Staff
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Demonetisation drive – some positive outcomes in the short term too

When it comes to demonetisation, it looks universally accepted that in the short term, the positives would be low and negatives high. Everyone has come to know about the negatives, be it the long queues or news of business slumping.

The scheme has also attracted a lot of manufactured negativity which includes a huge spurt in rumor mongering (OpIndia busted quite a few of those, but honestly we couldn’t keep track of all of them) and wrongly blaming the demonetisation scheme for some unfortunate deaths.

To steer away from all the negativity, here are some positive outcomes of the scheme. For example, look at these incidents:

  • Cash worth around 73 lakhs were seized from two cars by police near Nashik, Maharashtra. The cash fully comprised of the now defunct 500 and 1000 rupees notes.
  • Moving from the West to the East, it was reported that cash worth around 50 lakh was seized from a car in Guwahati.
  • Now moving to the South. 45 lakhs in old notes were seized from a car, this time in Puducherry.
  • Finally we make way to the North. Cash worth 30 lakhs in old notes were seized from a car in Ludhiana.
  • Also why should cars have all the fun! Cash recovered from trains too, that is, from people trying to smuggle it in trains.
  • One from Mamata Banerjee’s territory where 80 lakhs were seized from two men in Kolkata.
  • And now cash recovered from Post Office employee in Jharkhand.

The above examples (this is just indicative list, not exhaustive, many more such examples exist) dealt with police keeping the order of the law by seizing the notes. The notes in the above cases, till date driving the economy in black market, would finally end up at the RBI which will then proceed to destroy the defunct notes and issue new ones.

Now below are some examples where people decided to take matters into their own hands and save RBI the trouble of destroying the defunct notes. Macro-economically speaking its not a bad idea as for every piece of note obliterated all the other existing notes gain some value plus destroying the notes is equivalent to giving the notes back to the RBI (which is already happening):

  • The story started here, sacks full of burnt notes were found in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh just a day after the government announced the demonetisation scheme.
  • After Dhoni’s biopic, Jamsedhpur was again in the news when sackful of torn notes worth 25 lakhs were recovered from its drain.
  • A garbage dump in Pune was gifted cash worth 50,000 in the from of Rs 1000 notes. The only difference between these notes and the usual trash in the garbage is that the usual trash still has some value.
  • Another from Guwahati where a whopping 3.5 crores worth of notes were found swimming in the city drains.
  • Finally some people chose to return the now dead notes to River Ganga probably in the hope that they might attain salvation.

Again, this is just an indicative list and not exhaustive. You can scan the newspapers (or Google News) and find many such incidents being reported on a daily basis. These definitely can be called some short term positive outcomes of the demonetisation.

Apart from the law or the offender himself seizing or destroying the black money, some other impacts or side-effects we have seen are:

  • Government employees being caught for taking bribes in new notes, such as in Maharashtra, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.
  • There has been reports that people are returning or cancelling their dowry demands after demonetisation!
  • Small vendors and businesses are moving towards adopting technology like mobile wallets or card payments.

Though all this does bring us back to to the central subject of demonetisation and its effects on our economy. For now you can read this SWOT analysis of the of the demonetisation scheme, thereby giving the reader a much needed insight about what the scheme may and may not achieve.

Pathetic journalism – when media thought you can get STDs from ATMs

Dr. Shweta
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Pathetic journalism – when media thought you can get STDs from ATMs

In a s̶e̶l̶f̶ destructive attempt to malign a government initiative, the Indian media has once again unmasked their own “illiteracy” (can we still call it a mask after the million holes put in it by OpIndia?) and spread panic and rumour in the process. I am referring to some of the reports in the media, which claimed that ATMs may cause STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases)!

I first broke into laughter. It soon turned into horror as I wondered what exactly these media people were doing to those ATMs to get STDs! And how?! Ewww!

But worse, there still are people who believe the mainstream media, trusting them with veracity of information.

But I don’t trust them. So I looked at the source of this stupid news item. They all seemed to have picked it up from a news service IANS, but the ‘STD spreading’ headlines were the work of horror by our their own editorial teams. India Today even went so far as to link it to the “note ban”. Economic Times also linked it indirectly, but they didn’t put STD in the headline.

ATM STD news by India Today
Sensationalism or plain stupidity?

First, the facts:

These news reports quote a research to back their sensationalist headlines. The research quoted was conducted in New York by a biologist. What the media understood from the research was that ATMs are potential source of STI causing pathogens. The spin is that the pathogens are present on ATMs.

But this micro-habitat is also present on any other object that is commonly used by public; for example, door of a cab, bus, metro railings, office desk and even toilet seat at your home.

Yet, how often are we visiting venereologists after coming in contact with these objects? These pathogens can cause anything as small as common cold to grave illness like Tuberculosis. But the chances of contracting STD are negligible.

What is an STI? Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are infections that are spread primarily through person-to-person “sexual” contact. I am still wondering how the i̶n̶t̶e̶l̶l̶e̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶s̶ of our society are having fun with Automated Teller Machine that they are fearing about getting STD?

The truth is that the microbes mentioned in the news reports are the ones that are frequently present either as normal flora of our body or are result of unclean hands (something that is not the result of demonetization, at least).

News article says that microbial communities extracted from the ATMs in New York were those found in food, environment, residual DNA from meals, Lactobacillus (which is usually found in decomposing plants or milk products). As far as basic science is concerned, you can be assured that none of them can cause STI.

Study quoted in article also agrees that “the most common identified sources of microbes on the keypads were from household surfaces such as televisions, restrooms, kitchens and pillows, as well as from bony fish, mollusks and chicken.”

So aren’t we struggling with more risk in our own cosy beds than those shabby ATMs?

So how exactly did the media convince the ATMs to spread STDs?

According to the news, “the research team found a parasite typically seen in the gut of humans, along with a species closely related to the human parasite Trichomonas Vaginalis (TV), which can potentially cause STD.”

Now, the question is that how a species “closely related” to TV became TV itself and started causing STDs? Is it the new sci-fi parasite? It is like saying that anopheles which is a malarial vector, can also cause zika or dengue just because it is also a mosquito. But that never happens and so similar parasite cannot become TV and cause STD.

More importantly, when I went through the original research, I found that they could not confirm the presence of TV. Researchers in original article said that they were not able to differentiate Trichomonas vaginalis from closely related zoonotic species using 18S rRNA loci alone and in their study they could not confirm the likely source of eukaryotic pathogen species.

The other time they mentioned about TV where they said that it is from avian (birds) source: “A species closely related to the human parasite Trichomonas vaginalis that was originally isolated from avian sources were also recovered from ATM keypads.”

From this we can infer two things:

1. The researchers could not confirm the presence of pathogen that can cause STI.
2. The tumult created by media headlines was alarmist and gloom-mongering.

But you can’t expect the media to be responsible enough to go into the details of research reports before spreading rumours and panic. Indian media will conveniently blame the agencies they source the news from. But remember, the headlines are all theirs.

When they see something that sounds too strange to be true, you would expect them to crosscheck with some experts. But, they see STD and ATM in one report and were more than happy to run them with alarmist headlines, especially at a time when people are thronging ATMs, with some even linking it to the “note ban”.

Now you know, that it is actually the media that is spreading STD (Stupidly Through Discourse?) rather than the ATMs.

Arvind Kejriwal calls BBC journalist ‘dishonest’ for questioning his claims

OpIndia Staff
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Arvind Kejriwal calls BBC journalist ‘dishonest’ for questioning his claims

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has teamed up with Mamata Banerjee these days and is in the forefront on attacking the Modi government over the demonetisation move. Both the leaders jointly addressed a rally in Delhi recently and have threatened mass agitations if the government doesn’t roll back its decision.

Both the leaders wear simple clothes and draw their popularity from being ‘aam aadmi’ lifestyle and mannerisms. Both of the leaders claim not to be communists, but their rhetoric and policies are often on the left side of the ideological divide. And cadres of respective parties of both the leaders are largely made up of people who got disillusioned with Congress.

Now in yet another similarity with Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal has started showing petulance and reductionism that the West Bengal Chief Minister is often accused of. Just like Mamata declared anyone “Maoist” or a “CPM cadre” for asking uncomfortable questions, Kejriwal has started declaring people “dishonest” for not toeing his claims and narrative.

This facet of Kejriwal’s character came to the fore yesterday when he declared a BBC journalist “dishonest” and “lacking courage” when he dared to question some claims made by the AAP supremo in an interview.

In the interview, Kejriwal claimed that 55 people in India had died while standing in queues outside banks and ATMs. When the BBC journalist wondered how could he link all the deaths to demonetisation only – a fact that this OpIndia.com article also highlights – Kejriwal got angry and declared him dishonest:



During the entire interview, Kejriwal’s behaviour and body language was intimidating and aggressive, and he was not willing to answer counter questions about his claims. Instead he made up for that by accusing the journalist of being dishonest and bringing bad name to the legacy of BBC.

This belligerent behaviour is a sea change from the Arvind Kejriwal one saw during the Anna Hazare days, when he was most willing to talk to the media and would answer all kind of questions without losing his cool or indulging in character assassinations of those who questioned him.

Also, it is interesting that Kejriwal is insisting of an exaggerated and inflated data of 55 deaths due to demonetisation, while his own government is removing the official data of deaths due to dengue and chikungunya.

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