International rating agency Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the Government of India’s local and foreign currency issuer ratings to Baa2 from Baa3 yesterday, and changed the outlook on the rating to stable from positive. Moody’s also upgraded India’s local currency senior unsecured rating to Baa2 from Baa3 and its short-term local currency rating to P-2 from P-3. This happened to be the first such upgrade, since 2004.
Although we had seen signs of India’s economic surge, especially with the Ease of Doing Business rankings, this upgrade, flew in the face of all the critics and naysayers who had been crying about how PM Modi had killed the economy. Congress and Rahul Gandhi had recently criticized many actions of the Government like GST, Demonetization etc., and these same actions were hailed by Moody’s. Now, they might have needed a shoulder to cry.
Even Pro-Congress journalists like Pallavi Ghosh admitted that criticising Moody at this point would only make Congress look petty:
Congress coming across as bad loser by rubbishing moodys ratings .
— pallavi ghosh (@_pallavighosh) November 17, 2017
But being looked upon as petty is probably the last concern of a journalist named Rifat Jawaid and his pro-AAP blog JantaKaReporter. JantaKaReporter is famous in the annals of media as being responsible for multiple fake news, as well as crimes such as revealing identity of minors involved in sensitive cases. Most recently, JantaKaReporter claimed that a survey by Pew which showed PM Modi’s popularity scaling new heights, was actually a “con-job” based on an “imaginary survey” and was most probably funded by Modi!
Today, JantaKaReporter went into meltdown and declared war against Moody’s because it had raised India’s ratings. An article on the blog stated that a US federal court had indicted the agency for manipulative practices just before the global economic recession of 2008. This “questionable past” of the agency was raked up by JantaKaReporter to somehow discredit the agency as well as the ratings upgrade.
But just a couple of years ago, when the same Moody’s had either not upgraded the ratings or had issued warnings to the Modi Government, JantaKaReporter had eagerly covered all such news items without pointing out this “questionable past”:
It appears JantaKaReporter has now rescinded the following praise it had showered on the agency back then:
But the editor of JantaKaReporter, Rifat Jawaid got one thing right. In 2015, he had predicted that Moody’s would be criticized and will be called a “paid agency”. He had probably not anticipated that it would be he himself who would be doing it:
Lets hope the breakup does not affect Jawaid too much. Hang in there friend! And you can take solace in the fact that you were not bashed as much for this ridiculous u-turn because the internet found another bunny — a journalist named Mihir Sharma, who had taken ridiculous u-turns earlier too due to his hatred for Modi:
Hey @mihirssharma I think @mihirssharma would like to tell you something. He is a good guy. Listen to him. pic.twitter.com/amQ8VWifAS
— Vivek (@vivx) November 17, 2017
