The expose` of how foreign money was being routed into the country through the portal Newsclick endorses once again an already nationally-known fact that a lot of overseas elements have been colluding with their Indian accomplices to destabilise India and malign the country’s fair image. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has done very well to keep its campaign focused on all such anti-national activities -- aided and funded by international vested interests. The ED will certainly probe deeper into the whole affair and bring to fore uglier details of an anti-national conspiracy. But it has provided the nation one more evidence of how certain lobbies are working systematically to wage a disinformation war against the country.

 

Thanks to an increased overall alertness of the authorities, the Government has been able to swoop on many such elements operating in the country. Abusing various social media platforms, these elements have been spreading a lot of nonsense about India and its leadership. People were rather aghast to note that most such materials appeared in different media almost verbatim, indicating a specific and planned conspiracy to malign the country’s social and political systems. It has been common knowledge that many media houses -- internationally and internally -- have become partners in this conspiracy. The aim of all this activity is to spread disinformation. So, the national capital’s comprehensive Central Vista Project comes to be described as Prime Minister’s palatial residence. So, pictures of burning pyres in India are dispatched to international journals in an attempt to paint a gory picture of countless numbers of people are dying and are being given burning funerals because the Government is not able to check the pandemic. So, the Governments of a few States ruled by Opposition parties ramp up campaigns of false complaints about shortages of medical-grade oxygen or remdesivir doses or anti-coronavirus vaccines. And as all this takes place, a systematic media campaign also emerges to highlight all this falsehood.

 

A lobby of Left-liberals and urban-Naxals is at work all the time to paint a gory picture of what it describes as “anarchy” in the country. And all this activity is being funded by overseas sources -- as is being steadily exposed by not just the Enforcement Directorate but also other Government agencies. The details of the Newsclick portal case are damning and daunting. A Sri Lankan national -- Neville Roy Singham -- operating from China has been found pumping into India huge sums of money -- variously calculated between Rs 28 crore and Rs 68 crore -- to spread disinformation in the country. The portal Newsclick is also understood to have provided funds to or acted as a channel of funding for the activities of the dangerous and anti-national Elgar Parishad at Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra. The same portal has provided funds to urban-Naxals such as Gautam Navalakha and Bappaditya Sinha who were found to be in possession of anti-national materials and literature and are being tried by the law under various charges. These developments indicate a sinister, anti-national design whose flames are now threatening to affect the mindset of a lot of unsuspecting Indians in the long run.

 

The Government, of course, is acting tough. It has made suitable and appropriate changes in Information Technology (IT) Rules. It has already made it mandatory for international platforms and service providers such as Twitter or Facebook or their likes to follow the Indian legal, social and political protocol. Those who are not fitting the bill are being subjected to severe punishment under the law. Because platforms such as Twitter were ducking under the laws of different lands as international operators, they are now being made to fall in line by offering promises as per the American law under which they have been incorporated. All these official actions are making it difficult for anti-national elements to keep up their sinister campaigns.

 

However, the most unfortunate aspect of all this development is that certain political parties and outfits are forming a joint front to protect these anti-national elements in whatever manner possible. They appear to use these developments as a stepping stone to up their political ante against Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi in the next Lok Sabha elections in 2024. It is another matter, however, that the Opposition parties as well as the Left-Liberal and urban-Naxal lobbies are in for a severe disappointment because of successful counter the Government has developed in right time. Yet, factually, they do not have another option to malign India’s image. Thus, they appear to have got trapped in their own incompetence to come up with ways and means to offer an effective counter to the immense goodwill Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi and his Government and BJP have generated among masses. Going by that standard, these lobbies are fighting a battle that they have already lost. But they are in a Meri-Murgi-Ki-Ek-Taang mood and will not listen to voice of reason and wisdom -- of course to their own doom.