Submitted by narendramodifacts on Wed, 01/01/2020 - 00:00
Surveillance is going be a major theme in 2020. The good news is that there will be lots of dissent and protest this year. But how will an authoritarian government without a concept of compromise - or even tactical retreat - deal with widespread protest? Especially if this protest involves a large number of Muslims?
First, protestors will be demonised mercilessly. A propaganda attack must be the first response according to their war manual. We have had six years to see how the violent, communal rhetoric of the "proud to be followed by PM Narendra Modi" twitter army sets the tone of more mainstream discourse. The protestors will be anti-national, extremist, illiterate, puncture-wallahs who can be identified by their clothes. The Sangh twitterati will find evidence of a foreign hand - where there are signs of intelligent life, they see a foreign hand. The importance of a foreign hand is that once there is a foreign hand, nothing is off-limits. The propaganda is to pave the way for a "law and order" response to the protests. Dissenters need to be monitored, controlled and punished. We have already seen this language in use.
'The Centre has appointed Girish Chandra Murmu and R.K. Mathur as the new lieutenant governors of the two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, that are slated to come into existence on October 31... Murmu, who belongs to Mayurbhanj, Odisha, was seen as a trusted aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah during their stint in Gujarat. Murmu was the principal secretary in the chief minister’s office when Modi helmed the state government in Gujarat...
'If you saw the programme on IBN7 last night, vilifying Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, with BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and Sangh spokesperson Rakesh Sinha at their asabhya virulent best, shouting down and intimidating mild Sandeep Pandey and shouting continuously throughout whatever feisty Priyanka Chaturvedi (Congress spokesperson) had to say (which was hard-hitting and unanswerable), you would know what the case against the two activists is really about.
"Suspended IPS officer and an accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, GL Singhal has been reinstated by the Gujarat Government. The order comes after a review by the state home department of his suspension in less than a week after Anandiben Patel took over as the chief minister from Narendra Modi..."
"Gujarat intelligence and anti-terrorist squad officers stalked and snooped on Madhuri beyond the boundaries of the state. Her would-be husband, parents, brothers and friends were under surveillance too. And this had nothing to do with her personal safety or national security. A Saheb in Gujarat was interested in knowing the details of her love life... It's no longer an internal matter of Gujarat.
The Snoopgate story starts with the abduction and cold-blooded murder of an innocent young woman, who was framed as a terrorist by her killers [1]. One of them, G.L. Singhal, kept recordings of his telephone conversations with Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, in case he might need them to exonerate his own conduct. It is clips from these recorded conversations that were released by Gulail and Cobrapost.
"Ahead of general elections in six months, the snooping allegations have put Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime minister-designate Narendra Modi on the backfoot, especially when the saffron party's responses to the charges have been weak and unconvincing. Narendra Modi has topped several recent opinion polls, but the charges could tarnish his carefully crafted image as a pro-business and graft-free administrator..."
"Much before the controversy of snooping on a young architect and a senior IAS officer in Gujarat was exposed, the State Intelligence Bureau had drawn the attention of the Narendra Modi government to rampant state-sponsored phone tapping. The Bureau had apprehended "trouble and controversies in future" in an official letter and demanded a strict phone interception policy..."
