NL Hafta

Newslaundry reporters Khushi Mehrotra, Samarth Grover and Astha Savyasachi recount what it was like to report from the ground during the October 10 protests in Delhi. Abhinandan Sekhri begins by asking how live reporting differs from the investigations Newslaundry usually does, where the pressure is to stay accurate and avoid reacting in ways that could later be called unjournalistic. Khushi, who...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by political cartoonist Manjul, Rachita Taneja of Sanitary Panels fame, and comedian Sanjay Rajoura to ask whether Indian politics has lost its sense of humour. The discussion begins with a takedown of political cartoons on the Modi government’s direction. Abhinandan argues that satire has always mattered in democrac...

The Chief Justice of India’s remark that the polls in question were “only by-elections” in West Bengal is where this Hafta discussion begins. Abhinandan Sekhri calls it “a bit alarming”, and says similar casual comments have come up in earlier hearings. Neha Rathi, a Supreme Court lawyer and a petitioner in the SIR cases, says the Supreme Court was the right forum, but argues that the reason behin...

Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa challenges the framing of the Election Commission’s internal rift. Asked by Abhinandan Sekhri whether the “dissenting notes” amount to genuine dissent, Lavasa flips the premise, arguing that if two Election Commissioners share one view and a third disagrees, it is the third (the Chief Election Commissioner in this case) who is dissenting, not the two being...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Rinchen Norbu are joined by Anupam Manur, Professor of Economics at the Takshashila Institution, and Mihira Sood, Supreme Court lawyer specialising in women’s rights. The panel opens the discussion by examining the government’s decision to introduce a 0.4% fee on UPI merchant transactions above Rs 2,000, asking what the move means for a paym...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal and Anand Vardhan are joined by urban geographer and researcher Rashee Mehra to discuss Delhi's continuing housing crisis. Rashee traces the problem to a structural failure in planning. Using the example of Satya Niketan, a “regularised JJ colony”, she explains how a neighbourhood can be made legal while the construction within it remains unautho...

The discussion opens with Abhinandan Sekhri talking about the flood of commentary around India's quarterly GDP figures over the past two days.  Much of it, he says, is “just completely wrong” – although still a healthier public debate than recent controversies over food or language politics. He calls it a small win for Indian media, even if the conversation isn’t always well-informed. Vivek K...

This week’s Hafta panel tackled two connected threads: the anti-reservation protests and the suicide of an IIT Delhi student, Rishikesh Kumar.  Joining the Hafta panel this week were Dr Aqsa Shaikh, one of India’s first transgender doctors and a member of the Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force on Student Suicide Prevention in Higher Education, and Dr Sameena Dalwai, a law professor,...

This week, the Hafta panel discussed the BJP’s push to expand its presence on Instagram, a shift Manisha Pande linked to the party being caught off guard by the memes and reels that emerged from the CJP protests. Anurag Minus Verma argued the BJP’s problem isn’t taking Instagram seriously – it’s that its content is unsuited to the platform. Right-wing pages, he said, largely cycle through three or...

This Independence Day, NL Hafta’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Rinchen Norbu are joined by historian and author Sam Dalrymple.   The discussion began with the question: Was the India we inherited inevitable, or could history have taken a very different course? Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav .Sound by Anil Kumar Hosted on Acast. See ac...

On Meta, Abhinandan Sekhri asked whether the platform has the bandwidth to process takedown requests in India at that scale, or whether “it’s actually a phase where it’s the Wild West”.  Independent tech journalist Abhishek Baxi agreed with that characterisation and explained that Meta’s automated moderation system – a response to takedown requests in India doubling year on year – was behind...

For the 600th episode of NL Hafta, the panel – Abhinandan Sekhri and Anand Vardhan – are joined by Hafta alumni Jayashree Arunachalam and Mehraj Lone, who set the usual rules aside for an “unpopular opinions” special. Abhinandan’s own unpopular opinion is that the liberal “snowflake” stereotype often holds up in practice, with an inability among some liberals, particularly in journalist and writer...

This Hafta episode features author Chetan Bhagat unpacking why a youth-led street protest snowballed the way it did, and what it reveals about how anger travels online. Abhinandan Sekhri opens with a mea culpa on having dismissed “Gen Z” too readily. Bhagat is explicit in his assertion that the protest itself “would have been limited” were it not for visuals like that of a Delhi Police officer in...

In the latest episode of Hafta, the panel discusses whether political protest movements need ideological anchoring to succeed, sparked by a debate over the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) lack of clear ideological convictions. Poornima Joshi, the resident editor of The Hindu Businessline , argues that successful mass movements of the last decade – even ostensibly issue-based ones – have tended to ca...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Shardool Katyayan are joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, Executive Editor of The Caravan , and sports broadcaster Arjun Pandit. The discussion begins with Hartosh’s critique of the film Satluj (previously known as Punjab 95 ), which he labels as propaganda carrying partial truths. Hartosh, who has reported on Punjab for years, is also the nephew...

This week on Hafta, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan and Rinchen Norbu are joined by historian Ramachandra Guha. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav. Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The alleged theft of donations from the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya has opened a window into the opaque finances of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.  Our Hafta panel discusses the SIT investigation into missing funds from donation boxes, the unanswered questions around the crores collected during the temple construction drive, and the land purchase controversy that implicated trustee...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Anand Vardhan, and Rinchen Norbu are joined by a very special guest – our former colleague Jayashree Arunachalam. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav. Research inter Manya Garg .Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Shardool Katyayan are joined by journalist, author and former Amnesty India executive director Aakar Patel. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Abhay. Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Anand Vardhan and Rinchen Norbu are joined by veteran journalist Neerja Chowdhury.  Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav . Sound by Anil Kumar. Research Intern Manya Garg.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Suhasini Haidar,  Diplomatic Affairs Editor at The Hindu . In this week’s episode, the discussion moves from PM Modi’s Europe tour, particularly his visit to Norway, to press freedom.  Suhasini Haidar, who was present at the venue in Oslo, describes how shocked Norwegian journalists were to learn that th...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Rinchen Norbu and Raman Kirpal are joined by business journalist Govindraj Ethiraj and Anushka Saxena, a researcher from the Takshashila Institution. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Ashish . Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by senior journalist Aunindyo Chakravarty and The Hindu resident editor Varghese K George. The panel begins with what the recent poll results mean and if traditional election analysis is even equipped to understand the playing field.   Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Pro...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri and Manisha Pande are joined by Anupam Manur, professor of economics at the Takshashila Institute, and former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav. Sound by Anil Kumar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informatio...

This week on Hafta, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Pooja Prasanna of The News Minute and Sobhana K Nair, senior deputy editor of The Hindu . The panel focuses sharply on the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and the contentious issue of delimitation. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters . Produced by Amit Pandey with production assi...