The current protest: Desperation, deceit and disinformation

Public discourse in India is driven more by disinformation and hype rather than facts and logic. And the current protest is a classic example of this. 

The high-decibel, vociferous protests by the Congress and CJP against the Chief Election Commissioner, despite their lofty claims of safeguarding our democracy and upholding the Constitution, are a charade designed to mask a sinister agenda: a game plan that aims to undermine not only the highest institution of our electoral process but also the very basis of our sovereignty—all in a crass and illegal bid for power.

The cry of vote chori is a bogey; the alleged dissension within the ECI, as reported by a newspaper, is a half-truth; and the charge that the SIR is illegal is a red herring. Cut through the political rhetoric, and you get to the crux of the protest. The true drivers fuelling this protest are desperation, deceit and disinformation.

With the BJP juggernaut moving from strength to strength after three successive general election victories, the political Opposition in India is staring at near-total political oblivion. The crushing defeat inflicted by the BJP on the Mamata Banerjeeled TMC in the recent West Bengal elections appears to have been the last straw—a clear indication that these political dynasties posing as parties are becoming irrelevant in the march of New India.

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The Opposition had to manufacture a political earthquake to jump-start its flagging fortunes. Enter its media collaborators in this process: a mainstream newspaper publishes a report projected as a piece of investigative journalism but which is, in reality, a bundle of half-truths, indirect inferences and blatant disinformation—a report that makes a mountain out of a molehill. The Opposition latches on to this nonissue, takes to the streets, and the projected anarchy begins.

Central to the protest is the contention that the SIR is a partisan exercise being conducted by the ECI in a manner that favours the BJP and deletes genuine voters from the electoral rolls. Accordingly, the protesters demand that it be scrapped. The SIR, I must remind readers, is a constitutionally mandated process that has recently been upheld by the Supreme Court of India.