Governance is a difficult job, more so because of the penetration of technology. On one hand, it is a boon because it eliminates the middlemen and helps benefits reach directly from the government to the beneficiaries. But it has also evolved as a tool of propaganda and misinformation, the cost of which could be sometimes very high. India has become a victim of toolkits and propaganda campaigns many times in the last few years — anti-CAA riots, vaccine hesitancy campaigns during the Covid pandemic, and farm protests — are a few examples of the same. Even as a section of Indians themselves try to derail the country’s progress for their own parochial political interests, such propaganda attempts become a national security challenge when an external power is also involved.
A shocking revelation in the same regard has come from The New York Times this week. As per an investigation by the American daily, a tech-millionaire of Sri Lankan-Cuban origin, Neville Roy Singham, has been funding many Indian websites including NewsClick to adopt an editorial line that is sympathetic towards Chinese national interest. In a brutal indictment of his actions, NYT points out that Singham is a man who is very close to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is part of its influence operations across the world. The report goes on to assert that as per the corporate documents filed in India, Singham’s network funded the NewsClick website, which in return “sprinkled its coverage with Chinese Government talking points”.
Anyone who has followed the work of NewsClick on issues such as the Rafale acquisition, the handling of the Covid pandemic by India, farm protests and most recently on India’s attempt to build its strategic manufacturing sector, would agree that its reports are laced with unsubstantiated hyperboles and a naked attempt to push China-sponsored narrative.
For a sample, just revisit their stand on the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and India’s efforts to become a manufacturing hub. In one of their reports, they dismissed PLI as a freebie scheme which is a bane for a democracy like India. Ironically, PLI is a form of subsidy to incentivise domestic production in key sectors, a necessity to tackle the rising trade deficit with China. But it is no one’s guess why NewsClick and the journalists who work with that organisation are bashing the same subsidy which China has doled out on a massive basis to power its own industrialisation story.
Interestingly, even before NYT had published this report, the Indian government was the first to take cognisance of their malicious activities. In the year 2021, the Enforcement Directorate of India successfully traced a money trail between Singham’s network and NewsClick leading to a spate of raids on their Indian premises. At that time, NewsClick had played a victim card of attack on their ‘freedom of speech’. It had set the entire ball rolling with many leading journalists coming out in their support and even the Editor’s Guild of India, which has garnered a controversial reputation due to its selective actions coming out in their defence, by releasing a letter of condemnation. Today, when The New York Times, a foreign publication known for its staunch anti-India coverage has also indicted NewsClick, none of them have spoken on it.
The key takeaway from the NewsClick saga is that ‘freedom of speech’ has become a convenient refuge for the sellouts. A similar toolkit was on display during IT raids on the BBC that had evaded taxes as a part of its operations in the country. A rising India has become a point of irritation for many global actors, whether it is China or the propagandistic outlets in the West. In order to harm India’s national interest and to sabotage its national security, they have found many guns on hire. Such individuals are IINOs or what I call “Indian in Name Only”. They masquerade as journalists who are doing ‘critical journalism’ and ‘speaking truth to power’ but in reality, as shown by the NYT report, they are just doing the bidding for their masters.
China, of all the countries, is an authoritarian state that doesn’t have free media and is notorious for suppressing the freedom of speech of its own journalists. But while it discourages a fair assessment of its own actions, it is also known to fund propaganda operations across the world. Its activities are not limited to India but extend to the US and even Brazil. Many scholars have studied China’s influence operations in detail and they point out how it systematically uses various methods that range from cultivating foreign agents, social media armies and even outright funding of platforms to have them publish the Chinese propaganda on their supplement pages. Many newspapers including in India have come under scrutiny for publishing similar content as ‘advertorials’.
Unfortunately, in India, China’s actions also get political support from the Opposition parties. Case in point is the attack on BJP MP Nishikant Dubey by Congress leaders for speaking on the NYT report in the Parliament on Monday. Information warfare and propaganda outlets are a national security threat. It is time Indian political parties rise above their divides and narrow interests to see it as the danger that it really is.
The author is a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She writes on India’s foreign policy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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