New Delhi
To many Indians, Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros seems to be a villain for the persistent India-bashing done by NGOs funded by him. But the script may not have been written by him alone. He seems to be in league with global forces, or even people within the country who want to dent India’s image, its government and its economy.
A man known to harbour hidden agendas, Soros has been pretty vocal about his “mission” or “dream” for India—dislodge Prime Minister Narendra Modi and “make democracy flourish again” in the country. This, to some analysts, appears to be nothing but an open threat to meddle with the electoral process in the world’s largest democracy.
Soros’ dubious China link, which became public in the 1980s, also raised questions about the reason behind his interest in India and its neighbours. The timing of the smear campaigns launched by the 93-year-old philanthropist’s dirty tricks gang—just before parliament sessions and now just before the marquee G20 Summit—raises doubts about a larger conspiracy aimed at discrediting Indian institutions, the economy, the corporates and above all Modi, who has personally scripted the revival of the economy from the gloomy situation in 2013 when India had slipped into the category of “fragile five” economies—a group of nations that become increasingly reliant on risky foreign investment to fund their growth.
It may not come as a surprise, that a big global economy whose international supply chains India aspires to partially replace through its local manufacturing would be smirking in triumph every time an Indian Opposition leader tries to run down Modi by citing “anti-India hit jobs” executed by the Soros-funded NGOs like the Open Society Foundation. The NGO’s Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project or OCCRP has now come out with a report targeting a top Indian corporate—whose matters are already sub-judice and are being heard in the Supreme Court.
It would be foolish on the part of some leaders in the Opposition to use the OCCRP report to build a “corruption” plank for the revival of their political fortune in the upcoming Assembly elections and Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
The Indian voters are sure to dismiss the current allegations just like they did when graft was alleged in the Rafale jet deal with France, just before the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019. The efforts at the global stage to defame the Indian economy and corporates indirectly raise questions about the intention or agenda behind such exercises. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described Soros as “old, rich, opinionated and dangerous.”
Recently, X CEO Elon Musk went to the extent of threatening to take action to stop the “hate speech” narrative run by George Soros-funded NGOs to silence free speech. Musk spoke about a legal challenge when a user on X claimed that Soros-funded NGOs had been spreading false information about rising “hate incidents”, a ploy to seek stricter curbs on expression of free speech.
The EU has banned Soros but politicians in our country want to believe him and convince the Indian voters that the messiah of humanity and transparency has found a “corruption angle” in the super performance of a top company and that the government and watchdogs in the country are at fault in not clipping the wings of the company. With an annual outlay of $1.5 billion, the Soros family’s OSF claims to be on a self-proclaimed crusade against human rights violations and upholding of democratic institutions and practices. It is a known fact that Soros signed a pact with a Chinese spy operative in the 1980s and pumped substantial amounts of money into the country for economic system reform. Going by the Soros network’s ambitions to spread its tentacles in India, the easiest way for it would be to install a puppet regime. Dealing with Modi, whom even China wants ousted, appears to be giving the network a nightmare.
A weak India, would not be able to highlight the cause of the Global South and Soros network wants to use its hit jobs to spread confusion about the country and its capabilities, notwithstanding the success of Chandrayaan mission and the growth in the fields of UPI, financial inclusion, space industry and poverty alleviation.
Forces outside India—and those within the country that allegedly coordinated with the Soros network—must also be in some sort of a shock that the OCCRP allegations against an Indian corporate have not caused upheaval similar to the one caused by a similar report earlier this year.
As things stand today, Soros networks’ attempts to run down Indian institutions and democracy are testing the maturity of the masses. While more hit jobs by forces like Soros network can’t be ruled out in the future, the biggest takeaway from the latest failed attempt to incite economic and political trouble in the nation is that citizens here have refused to be fooled by forces that want to sabotage a success story called India.