A November 28 briefing in The Economist, has once again voiced strong opinions against the Modi government. The piece titled Narendra Modi threatens to turn India into a one-party state minces no words as it enumerates instances of how there is a marked difference between how people are treated in India based on their support for the ruling regime.

It begins by giving the example of Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswamy, whose case was addressed by the judicial system with an unprecedented speed. “Mr Goswami spent just a week in detention, and his case had hardly reached the lowest rung of courts, yet the country’s topmost judges ignored the court’s backlog of some 60,000 cases to schedule a bail hearing within a day of the anchor’s appeal. This is in a country where prisons hold twice as many inmates awaiting trial, some 330,000 people, as they do convicts,” said The Economist.

It goes on to showcase how a majority of undertrials, especially from oppressed and marginalized groups or religious and ethnic minorities seldom get access to justice at the same speed. It also highlights how the courts have treated cases of dissenters and activists. The piece sites examples of Fr. Stan Swamy as well as the hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed in Kashmir when several young men, some still teenagers, went missing during the shutdown in the region after the abrogation of Article 370.

The Economist then goes on to warn of impending authoritarianism in the country, given the systematic groundwork being prepared by the regime. “Many cogs in India’s institutional machinery are not merely complacent, but have grown complicit in a project that threatens to turn the country into a one-party state,” says the piece. It slams the police in particular for allowing itself to become a tool of oppression saying, “Of the ostensibly independent institutions that are now compliant, India’s police stand out. Despite individually humane and honest officers, the impression Indians hold of the force is that its main purpose is to protect the powerful and persecute the weak. A case in point is the Delhi police’s management of communal riots that racked parts of India’s capital for three days last winter, leaving 53 dead.”

It also cites examples of the regime’s stranglehold over other institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), where the regime has instituted its ‘yes-men’ in positions of power. It even questioned the impartiality of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The Economist also sites examples of non-BJP run states in India being targeted by the party in a bid to overthrow existing state governments fiving examples of Madhya Pradesh where the party has been successful and West Bengal where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee remains a thorn in the side for Amit Shah who The Economist calls “Mr Modi’s fearsome chief lieutenant”.

It criticizes the Modi government’s increasing stranglehold on the media saying, “In the past two months, new rules have curtailed the permitted level of foreign investment in online media and placed the entire sector under the authority of the broadcasting ministry.” Curbing access to foreign funding has been a strategy the government has used previously in shutting down human rights organisations and NGOs. It cites the example of how Amnesty International was forced to wrap up operations in India.

The entire piece as published in The Economist may be read here.

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The Economist, one of the world’s most respected news publications, has come out in strong condemnation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his divisive and polarizing agenda. In a piece titled “Narendra Modi stokes divisions in the world’s biggest democracy” that appears in the Leaders section both in print and online, the publication holds no punches as it takes on Modi’s Hindutva agenda.

It says, “Last month India changed the law to make it easier for adherents of all the subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants (see Briefing). Those sound like technicalities, but many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net.”

It further criticizes the recent Citizenship Amendment Act saying, “Mr Modi’s policies blatantly discriminate against his Muslim compatriots. Why should a secular government shelter persecuted Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but explicitly vow not to take a single downtrodden Muslim?”

Tracing the BJP’s rise to political prominence from the rubble of the Babri Mosque that was demolished by members of the arty and its affiliates on December 1992, the magazine also brings up the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 when Modi was the state’s chief minister, showcasing how the party’s actions have been building up to this latest attempt to threaten the citizenship of minotities. The publication also says, “Alas, what has been electoral nectar for the bjp is political poison for India. By undermining the secular principles of the constitution, Mr Modi’s latest initiatives threaten to do damage to India’s democracy that could last for decades.”

In more scathing criticism, The Economist connects the dots between the Ayodhya dispute and the CAA, and lays bare the Modi regime’s agenda saying, “The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that had the effect of depriving it of its favourite cause, by clearing the way for a Hindu temple to be built at the site of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya. The citizenship ruckus appeals to the party for the very same reasons that it has prompted widespread alarm. The plan to compile a register of genuine Indians as part of a hunt for foreign interlopers affects all 1.3bn people in the country. It could drag on for years, inflaming passions over and over again, as the list is compiled, challenged and revised. Just how the register will be drawn up, and what the consequences of exclusion are, remain woolly. Indeed, Mr Modi is already claiming it has all been misunderstood. Meanwhile, the hullabaloo helps reinforce the notion, so electorally valuable to the bjp, that Hindus, although about 80% of the population, are threatened by shadowy forces that it alone has the courage to confront.”

The Economist also pulls no punches while taking down the Modi regime for the shocking abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir, saying, “The citizenship row is only the latest in a series of affronts, from the bjp’s lionising of vigilantes thought to have killed Muslims to the collective punishment of the people of the Kashmir valley, who have suffered arbitrary arrests, smothering curfews and an internet blackout for five months.”

The entire piece that appeared in The Economist may be read here.

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मोदी सरकार के नोटबंदी के फैसले पर ब्रिटेन से प्रकाशित मशहूर पत्रिका इकोनॉमिस्ट के तीखे लेख पर आरबीआई तिलमिला गया है। पीएम नरेंद्र मोदी के खास माने जाने वाले आरबीआई गवर्नर उर्जित पटेल इस रिपोर्ट से खासे खफा हैं और उन्होंने इसकी प्रतिक्रिया में किसी तानाशाह का तरीका जैसा अपनाया है। पिछले दिनों आरबीआई ने इसका बदला लेते हुए इकोनॉमिस्ट के वरिष्ठ संवाददाता स्टेनल पिगनल को आरबीआई की हर दिन होने वाली ब्रीफिंग्स से बाहर रखा।

दिल्ली में तैनात इकोनॉमिस्ट के संवाददाता पिगनल ने आरबीआई के इस कदम पर ट्वीटर पर अपना गुस्सा जाहिर किया। एक के बाद एक किए गए कई ट्वीट्स में उन्होंने मोदी सरकार की ओर से किए जा रहे पारदर्शिता के दावे को ढोंग करार दिया।

3 दिसंबर के द इकोनॉमिस्ट के अंक में लिखे लेख में पिगनल ने न सिर्फ नोटबंदी के फैसले की कड़ी आलोचना की थी बल्कि मीडिया से बात न करने पर उर्जित पटेल को भी आड़े हाथ लिया था। अपने लेख में स्टेनली पिगनल ने जो लिखा वह इस तरह है- 
 

भारत सरकार के नोटबंदी के फैसले के भयानक नतीजे दिख रहे हैं।

देश में सर्कुलेशन में मौजूद 86 फीसदी करेंसी को वापस लेने का फैसला एक खराब विचार था। साथ ही इस फैसले को लागू करने का तरीका भी बेहद खराब था।
स्टेनली ने अपने लेख में लिखा –

फर्ज कीजिये कि एक दिन दुनिया की एक बड़ी और तेज रफ्तार अर्थव्यवस्था वाली सरकार को लगा कि उसकी सबसे बड़ी प्राथमिकता करोड़ों रुपये की ब्लैकमनी दबाए बैठे अमीरों को सबक सिखाना है। लोगों की जबरदस्ती सहमति हासिल इस सरकार ने अपने प्रिटिंग प्रेसों को धड़ाधड़ नोट छापने के आदेश दिए। ताकि महंगाई की आंधी में छिपा कर रखे गए इन नामुराद अमीरों के नोटों की वैल्यू खत्म हो जाए। साथ ही उसने लोगों से अपने पुराने नोट बैंकों में जमा करने की भी मिन्नतें कीं। (जहां कम से कम इस रकम पर ब्याज तो मिलती है) । अब सरकार नए हासिल पैसों से लोगों को टैक्स छूट दे सकती थी और लोक निर्माण स्कीमों की फंडिंग कर सकती थी।

जाहिर है आलोचकों के लिए यह सन्न करने वाला मामला था। क्योंकि महंगाई तो हर उस शख्स को परेशान करेगी जिसके पास कैश है। लेकिन ब्लैकमनी रखने वालों की संपत्ति पर इसका फर्क नहीं पड़ेगा। क्योंकि उनका ज्यादातर काला धन कैश में नही प्रॉपर्टी, सोना या ज्वैलरी में होगा। लेकिन शायद सरकार को इस बात का अंदाजा नहीं होगा नोटबंदी जैसे कठोर कदम अहम सरकारी संस्थानों की अहमियत को चोट पहुंचा सकते हैं। डर है कि इस तरह के फैसले देश की करेंसी में लोगों के भरोसे को कम न कर दे। इस तरह के कदम कुछ और व्यापक सांस्थानिक नाकामी का रास्ता भी साफ कर सकते हैं। नतीजतन हाइपर इन्फ्लेशन यानी बहुत ज्यादा महंगाई का दौर आ सकता है। लोगों को यह विश्वास नहीं रह जाएगा कि सरकार देश के भविष्य के मद्देनजर कोई बेहतर फैसला कर सकती है।

तेज-तर्रार पत्रकारिता की नजीर के तौर पर इस लेख को यहां और विस्तार से पढ़ा सकता है।  It may be read here

The post नोटबंदी पर सवाल उठाने वाले पत्रकार आरबीआई की तानाशाही के शिकार appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Stanley Pignal, the magazine’s correspondent in the capital took to twitter to express his sense of outrage, even calling this move as a farce on the government’s ‘claim of transparency.’

Pignal had in a biting piece in the prestigious international magazine, been critical of not just the de-monetization policy but the RBI governor not speaking to the media. On December 3, 2016, the Economist wrte:

The dire consequences of India’s demonetisation initiative
Withdrawing 86% by value of the cash in circulation in India was a bad idea, badly executed

SUPPOSE that one day the government of a large and fast-growing economy became convinced that its highest priority was to purge the country of black-economy millionaires hoarding piles of illicit cash. Seeking popular approval, it sent the printing presses into overdrive, hoping to inflate away the value of these secret piles of wealth. It worked: rising prices struck a blow against the undeserving rich, and by egging on others to deposit their money in banks (where it could at least earn interest), the shadow economy shrank. The government could plough the newly created money into tax breaks and public-works schemes.

Critics, rightly, would stand aghast. Inflation would affect everyone who held cash, law-abiding or not. Much of the wealth of those enriched by the black economy would be insulated, because lots of their lucre is held not in cash but in property, gold or jewellery. Such heavy-handed measures could undermine the credibility of important government institutions. Fear that they might be used again in future could weaken confidence in the currency as a store of value—paving the way for some broader institutional failure, like hyperinflation. Long-run trust in the judgment of the state might be threatened.

The rest of the sharp bit of journalism may be read here
 

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