Newslaundry Interviews

N Venugopal Rao is a writer and the nephew of Varavara Rao, the poet who has been arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case. Varavara was arrested two years ago along with 12 other activists. He has been repeatedly denied bail and has been in poor health for the past month, testing positive for Covid on July 16. In this interview with Newslaundry ’s Manisha Pande, Venugopal explains how the family was a...

Vivek Kaul is an author, columnist and commentator, known for his Easy Money trilogy on the history of money and banking and the fundamental issue behind the global financial crisis. His latest book, Bad Money: Inside the NPA Mess and How It Threatens the Indian Banking System , focuses on the layers within layers of India’s non-performing assets problem. In this interview with Newslaundry ’s Abhi...

Ziya Us Salam is a journalist and author. Presently the associate editor of Frontline , he has been associated with the Hindu for over two decades. His latest book, Inside the Tablighi Jamaat , delves into the religious organisation accused by the governing establishment and the mainstream media of spreading “corona jihad” in India. In this conversation with Newslaundry ’s Mehraj D Lone, Ziya begi...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this episode of NL vs NL, Newslaundry subscribers Dhruv Thakkar and Yash debate on whether traditional currency s...

Nitin Pai is the director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy. In the episode of NL Conversations, he speaks with Meghnad S about policy, ideology and technology. Talking about “liberal nationalism”, he believes it can only exist in India, for elsewhere people will argue that it’s not possible to be “liberal” and “nationalist” at the sa...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this episode of NL vs NL, Chahak Gupta and Newslaundry subscriber Agastya Sreenivasan debate the uncomfortable qu...

Check out Stop Press and susbcribe at https://stoppress.substack.com/ In the latest episode of NL Conversations, Newslaundry ’s Chitranshu Tewari speaks to Gautam Mishra, joining in from Melbourne. Gautam is the founder and chief executive officer of Inkl, a bundle news subscription platform that unlocks coverage from premium publishers like the New York Times and the Economist with a monthly...

In this age of the internet, there’s little that doesn’t go viral. Including the news. But there’s some confusion as to what is meant by “viral news” and what constitutes “viral content”. More to the point, is there a difference between “news” and “content”? Or are they synonymous? To discuss the finer points of this question, Roli Pulse, the digital arm of Roli Books , in association with Newslau...

Sanjay Jha is a politician, writer, and columnist. He was sacked as a spokesman of the Congress, apparently over a pair of articles in the Times of India where he criticised the party’s “leadership vacuum”, the lack of “internal democratic process that listens to individual voices” and inability to get “up and running with any sense of urgency” in the wake of electoral defeats. Jha sits down with...

Swara Bhasker is one of India’s most outspoken celebrities, regularly lending her voice to progressive causes and public protests. This has made the actor known for her performances in Tanu Weds Manu, Anaarkali of Aarah , and Rasbhari one of the big bugbears of Hindu nationalist TV news anchors and social media trolls. Swara speaks with Meghnad S about nepotism in Bollywood, the audience’s role in...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this episode of NL vs NL, Shubh Soni and Newslaundry subscriber Dhiraj Bhandari debate whether countries should b...

In May, we released an NL Sena, “ The New New Delhi ”, a deep dive into the Narendra Modi government’s much-touted project to redesign Central Vista, the heart of the national capital. Reporter Hameeda Syed also analysed just why the government was pushing forward with the project even as the Covid-19 pandemic was ravaging the poor. In this edition of Session with Sena, Hameeda, along with Newslau...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this episode of NL vs NL, Newslaundry subscribers Aditya Relangi and Aishwarya Mahesh debate whether public healt...

Kritika Pandey is a writer and poet. Her short story The Great Indian Tee and Snakes recently won the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has also won the 2020 James W Foley Memorial Award and the 2018 Harvey Swados Fiction Prize.  Pandey sat down with Abhinandan Sekhri to talk about her life, work and literary journey. “I was responding to the contemporary sociopolitical upheavals in In...

On the Global Press Freedom Index, India ranks 142 out of 180 countries. To make sense of why a country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy fares so abysmally on press freedom, it’s imperative to locate and speak about the different pressures that journalists are under. To this end, Roli Pulse, the digital arm of  Roli Books , in association with  Newslaundry , orga...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this episode of NL vs NL, Shardool Katyayan and Parikshit Sanyal of Newslaundry battle it out over the highly con...

The news media, like most spaces, has a big blindspot when it comes to the representation of women, even as they bear the brunt of the negative impact of the information explosion. How and why is it so? What can be done to rectify the situation.    To discuss these questions, Chitranshu Tewari spoke with Lakshmi Chaudhry, the founder of Splainer Media and the co-founder of Firstpost .&nb...

The news media is in a crisis. Already struggling with falling revenues and eroding credibility, the media has been left to battle for survival by the Covid pandemic and its economic fallout. Is there a way of this crisis? If there’s, where does it lead? To discuss the challenges facing the news media and how they can be dealt with,  Newslaundry  organised a webinar in partnership with t...

Hasina Kharbhih is the founder of the Impulse NGO Network, a civil society organisation based in Shillong, Meghalaya, which works to combat human trafficking in Northeast India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. INGON, as it’s popularly known, has helped rescue and rehabilitate thousands of trafficked women and children over the past two decades. In this interview with Snigdha Sharma, Hasina explain...

Indian television news has acquired an unsavoury reputation over the past few years owing to the bombastic anchors and their  primetime rants  peddling bigotry. Now, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, as advertising revenues, the chief source of income for mainstream media, dwindle, can TV news survive in its current form? To discuss this and much more, Roli Pulse, the digital arm...

Following up on their last webinar, “Is TV news dead”,  Roli Books  brought together another panel to debate the other aspect of the topic, “Television News: Relevance and Credibility in Today’s India”. Abhinandan Sekhri, co-founder of  Newslaundry , was joined by Nidhi Razdan, executive editor of  NDTV , and Saahil Menghani, news reporter and anchor. Razdan argued that th...

For over a month, India and China have been locked in a tense border conflict in eastern Ladakh. The standoff turned violent early this week, leading to the killing of 20 Indian soldiers. Grim as the situation is, it is not quite clear what exactly is happening on the ground, and what it means for relations between the two countries.  To demystify the conflict and explain its strategic and po...

To sink or to float is the question. In India, as elsewhere, the internet revolution has compelled newspapers and magazines to transition to digital. The transition has been slow, however, and most newspapers and magazines are still primarily in the print space. Will the pandemic hasten it? To discuss this, Roli Pulse, the digital arm of  Roli Books , in association with  Newslaundry , o...

Tired of loud frothy-mouth, potty-mouth debates on primetime TV? Tired of sad character-limited fights on Twitter where you don't really learn anything?  We have something that might excite you. Newslaundry presents a new podcast: NL vs NL.  Let's make debates great again! In this special episode of NL vs NL, Newslaundry subscribers Jefferson Simon, Dhruv Pandey, Saloni Dangwal, and Umes...

THIS IS JUST A TEASER. WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW: https://bit.ly/NLInterviewDigvijayaSingh Digvijaya Singh is a senior Congress leader, Rajya Sabha MP, and the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. In this interview, he sits down with  Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri to discuss Jyotiraditya Scindia’s exit from the Congress, recent defections in Madhya Pradesh, his political ambitions, and...