NL Hafta

The British author and journalist tackles all the criticism that has come his way since his Overseas Citizen of India status was revoked.Early in November, the Narendra Modi government revoked British author and journalist Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizen of India status. Aatish stated that this was the government’s way of punishing him for some of his recent journalistic work — chiefly, the Time magazine piece that described Modi as “India’s Divider-in-Chief”. In a Skype conversation with Manisha Pande, Aatish talks about the government’s decision and the impact it’s had on his life. He also takes on a range of criticism that has come his way since the controversy erupted: why does he keep his father’s surname? What about the piece he wrote celebrating his American Green Card? Listen.

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NL Hafta has gone behind the paywall, but we love our listeners. So here's a little sneak peek into the complete episode. This week’s episode features host Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Meghnad S who are joined by Sudhir Suryawanshi, the man behind Katta News -- the news outlet that predicted the Ajit Pawar-Fandavis coup two days before it occured. The panel discusses the big news of the week, from the Maharashtra political drama and Pragya Thakur’s recent remark on Nathuram Godse to the controversial Transgender Persons Bill, among other things. The panel also discusses the Draft Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill 2019.Listen to the complete episode here: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/11/30/hafta-252-maharashtra-pragya-singh-thakur-trans-bill-2019-and-more

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NL Hafta has gone behind the paywall, but we love our listeners. So here's a little sneak peek into the complete episode.This week’s episode features host Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Meghnad S who are joined by freelance journalists, Nitin Sethi and Vrinda Gopinath. The panel discusses the big news of the week -- electoral bonds, Pragya Thakur’s nomination on parliamentary defence panel, massive protests by JNU students, among other things. Nitin talks at length the issue of electoral bonds and his investigative series on the same. The panel also talks about the announcement of a nation-wide NRC by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha, water impurity issue in Delhi, and more.Listen to the complete episode here: https://www.newslaundry.com/subscription-data/2019/11/23/hafta-251-electoral-bonds-jnu-pragya-thakur-and-more

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NL Hafta has gone behind the paywall, but we love our listeners. So here's a little sneak peek into the complete episode. In this episode, host Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Anand Vardhan, Madhu Trehan from the Newslaundry team are joined by guest Alok Prasanna Kumar, to discuss the brewing topics from this week. Speaking about the Ayodhya verdict,Mehraj asks,”Should the Supreme Court of the Republic of India be adjudicating disputes that are from before the formation of the Republic?”The panellists also talk about the Sabarimala issue, government formation in Maharashtra, JNU protests, Aatish Taseer and more. Listen to the complete episode, here: https://www.newslaundry.com/subscription-data/2019/11/16/hafta-250-ayodhya-sabarimala-jnu-protests-and-more

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Residents of Sector 7, Faridabad, National Capital Region, are in a state of shock. On the afternoon of November 9, four members of a family were found dead in their home. The bodies of Dr Praveen Mediratta, his wife Sudesh, their daughter Priyanka and son-in-law Saurabh Kataria were lying in a pool of blood in House Number 19. The police have confirmed that they were stabbed to death.Read it here: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/11/13/faridabad-murders-mediratta-investigation

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In this episode of Hafta, host Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by Newslaundry’s Madhu Trehan, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone as well as two guests, Shreeshan Venkatesh, editorial head at CarbonCopy, and Vivek, a Newslaundry subscriber who is a journalist based in Chennai.The discussion kicks off on the recent study by Climate Central, a news organisation in the United States, which estimates that coastal cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai will be underwater by 2050. “It is not a new projection, rather it is a new estimate of the impacts of earlier projections,” notes Shreeshan. He points out that this scenario is with “moderate cuts” to emissions, when the real picture is much worse. Speaking about the ongoing clash between police and lawyers in Delhi, Madhu says, “Why do the lawyers believe they need special treatment? The way they have taken the law into their hands, beaten up cops, they really seem to think they are above the law.” Manisha adds, “Police brutality is a fact. But I don’t know if those cops who are protesting have indulged in it, so I would be sympathetic to them. I won’t judge them by the actions of their entire tribe.”Speaking about India’s decision to pull out of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, Vivek says, “I think there is a sense of uncompetitive behaviour in the Indian industry because we are protecting them from the competition.” Mehraj points to the ideological aspect of such trade deals. “If you go back in history, there have been similar agreements like NAFTA that have been disastrous. Such deals are the reason for Latin America’s backlash against neoliberalism that has destroyed their economies.”The panel also discuss the revocation of the writer Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizenship of India card, North India’s air pollution, and more. Tune in!

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In this episode of Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Madhu Trehan, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone of Newslaundry are joined by Suhasini Haidar, national and diplomatic affairs editor of The Hindu. The panel discusses a range of issues that made news this week.They start with the controversial visit of a delegation of the European Members of Parliament to Kashmir earlier this week. “I think it was a case of misplaced priorities as far as the government is concerned,” Suhasini says. She questions why the government used an obscure think tank rather than one of its own agencies to invite the delegation. Could it be that Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t care about what the international press says about him? Suhasini disagrees, “I don’t think that is true. I definitely think they were tracking very closely what happened in the international media, particularly before Modi went to the US because they were worried about the kind of coverage that was coming out.”They move on to discuss the WhatsApp snooping row. Mehraj is of the view that Ravi Shankar Prasad, who said the government has sought a response from WhatsApp, is “passing the buck” when the messaging platform itself is a victim in this instance. Suhasini says, “I think WhatsApp has been passing the buck as well. Why do they have a software that is so easy to hack?” Speaking about the deteriorating air quality in Delhi and its coverage in the media, Manisha says, “When journalists are only going to talk about this as an issue around Diwali, then you are just minimising the scope of the problem.” Suhasini and Mehraj point towards the systemic causes of the problem that are rarely talked about.

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In this episode of Newslaundry Hafta, host Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Madhu Trehan and Mehraj Lone are joined by Diksha Madhok, Editor and Director of Quartz India. They discuss the recently concluded assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana, the release of National Crime Records Bureau data, the epidemic of protests all across the globe, and other issues.On the missing details of lynching, religious killings in the latest NCRB data, Abhinandan says, “I am not entirely of the view that these have been left out because of malicious intent. I do genuinely believe it’s too subjective.” However, Manisha argues, “I think for the police collating lynching data should be easy.”Apart from the assembly election results, the panel also discusses the local Block Development Council elections in J&K. Mehraj says, “The way they have been represented in the media is misleading because these are indirect elections as people don’t vote, only panchs and sarpanchs vote in them.” They also discuss the exit polls in the run-up to the assembly elections. Madhu argues that the way channels were carrying how their exit poll got the results right, it is “non-journalistic”. “Nobody cares whether you got it right or wrong”, she adds.Speaking on the epidemic of protests that have broken out in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, etc., Madhu says, “No matter what hardships people are going through in India, our people have a spirit that is generally a fighting, joyous spirit.” Abhinandan’s remark, “We, Indians are aggressive” sparks a debate on the panel with Mehraj responding, “Isn’t that a bit of generalization? If you see there are small stories, small acts of kindness everywhere.” On the other hand, Diksha reasons that we are overworked and stressed that probably manifests itself in some of the ways as aggressiveness. Tune in, There’s more.

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This week’s Hafta features host Manisha Pande, Madhu Trehan, Mehraj Lone and Raman Kirpal. Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, Contributing Editor with Business Standard joins in as a special guest.Manisha kicks off the discussion by asking Sambhav why we don’t hear as many land conflict cases now. Sambhav reasons that we only hear of the long-pending cases because the economy, construction sector, infrastructure have slowed down in recent years. “A lot of big projects are not coming up because of the shape of the economy that we are in right now and have been in the past few years”, he adds. They move on to discuss the manner in which the top courts are responding to cases in recent times. Madhu says, “I think one should address that the country is facing huge cynicism of every institution whether it’s CBI, RBI, educational institutions or the Supreme Court.”Speaking on media’s coverage of the Ayodhya dispute’s final hearing, Manisha talks about how media houses painted the common practice of shredding papers in the court as blasphemy against the Hindu religion. Raman was quick to point out how the CJI himself said that the evidence provided (map) was not relevant to the bench so he himself asked Rajeev Dhavan to tear it up if he wanted to. The panel also discussed the outright violation of News Broadcast Standards Authority’ s guidelines by TV channels on the very day it was published. They also discuss the “vendetta politics” that has been doing the rounds in the current political scenario as opposition leaders are being questioned for their involvement in multi-crore scams, and much more.

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Hafta is back! The gang reunites with host Abhinandan Sekhri along with Manisha Pande, Madhu Trehan and Anand Vardhan. Joining us this week is the newest addition to the Newslaundry team, Mehraj Lone. This week’s podcast begins with the panel discussing Mohan Bhagwat’s recent speech at a Vijayadashami function. They scrutinise his comments on lynching being a "Western construct" while trying to come up with a Hindi word for "lynching". Mehraj questions the accuracy of Bhagwat's claims that lynching is a subject in all other religious texts except Hinduism.The conversation shifts to the big news of the week: the murder of an RSS worker and his family in West Bengal, the serial murders by a Kerala woman, and the Modi-Xi meet in Tamil Nadu. Madhu has a lot to say about the state of present-day journalism. She says, "Journalism is going behind the incident and finding out what really happened." Abhinandan argues that journalism can be "positive or negative". But, he adds, it has to be unexpected. The panel discusses the paradigm shift in journalism and the significance of present-day reporting.Listen up!

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