NL Hafta

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Anand Vardhan are joined by Banjot Kaur, a health reporter at Down to Earth . Banjot Kaur begins by explaining the scientific and public health aspects of the ongoing Covid surge in India. "The surge might start decreasing in mid-May, but due to healthcare collapse it won't be seen directly," she says. She also...

This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande are joined by Arunabh Saikia of Scroll. Arunabh elaborates upon his recent report on India's oxygen crisis and what caused it. The Narendra Modi government, he explains, planned to set up 150 oxygen generation over eight months ago but only a few of them are up and running. "They only take four to six weeks to set up and we coul...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Anand Vardhan are joined by Dr Madhu Gupta, a professor of community medicine at PGIMER, Chandigarh. The conversation begins with India’s Covid situation. On vaccine supplies, Abhinandan asks about India’s export of vaccines and whether developed nations are hoarding supplies. On the surge in Covid infection...

This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal and Jayashree Arunachalam are joined by Kavita Murlidharan, an independent journalist. Kavita speaks about what’s driving the assembly election campaign in Tamil Nadu. "It's difficult to understand the mood of the people this time because we don't have Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha. They have been driving the elections in Tamil Nadu for the last...

This week on Hafta, host Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan and Mehraj D Lone of Newslaundry , and Shoaib Daniyal of Scroll . Shoaib begins by discussing the ongoing Bengal election, which he’s covering for his news platform. The panellists also discuss the Myanmar coup and India's role as the crisis-struck country’s neighbour. "India has its part in not antagonizing the af...

This week on NL Hafta, it’s an all-Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Raman Kirpal. In context of the recent Newsance episode , the panel discusses a recent ad of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna. Manisha, speaking to the woman in the advertisement, found out that she has not been given a house to live in. A picture of her was taken while she...

This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Jayashree Arunachalam, Anand Vardhan and Raman Kirpal are joined by veteran journalist and political commentator Aarti Jairath.  Aarti discusses the complexity of the Indian elections and the need for a “grey area” while reporting on it. “One of the temptations that should be resisted is to jump to the conclusion,” she says. The panel follows up on th...

This week on NL Hafta, it’s an all- Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Raman Kirpal. In the light of Mithun Chakroborty joining BJP in Kolkata, Abhinandan lauds his “amazing success story”. “His entire rise has been phenomenal. Govinda was called the poor man’s Mithun,” he added. Manisha also points out how the BJP used left rally’s pic...

This week on NL Hafta, it’s an all- Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Anand Vardhan. Abhinandan explains India’s new digital media rules and their implications on organisations like Newslaundry . Manisha notes that such stringent laws are not in place for the television media, while Jayashree and Mehraj point out why these are “rules”...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Raghu Karnad, author and contributing editor of the Wire . Reflecting back to the Delhi riots that took place last February, Raghu describes how he saw masked men chanting “Jai Shri Ram”, setting fires, and smashing vehicles, even as the police were in the vicinity. He also recalls...

This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan, and Jayashree Arunachalam of Newslaundry are joined by Dhanya Rajendran, editor-in-chief of the News Minute . Commenting on the murder of a lawyer couple in Telangana even after the state’s high court had ordered that they be protected, Dhanya says, “Whoever executed the murder, whoever gave the contract for the...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, and Mehraj D Lone are joined by author and journalist Hridayesh Joshi. Hridayesh begins by talking about his book, Rage of the River , which analysed the Kedarnath disaster. On the uncertainty surrounding the cause of the recent disaster in Uttarakhand, and its ramifications, he stresses the need for an “early wa...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, and Jayashree Arunachalam are joined by Vivek Kaul, an author and journalist. Starting off with the union budget, which was presented on February 1, Vivek says the government has “cleaned up the expenditure side of the budget”. He also explains what “health and wellbeing” refers to, and just how the government’s push...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal are joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of the Caravan magazine. The discussion starts off with the farmers’ tractor rally on Republic Day. Hartosh says, “I was not surprised that the route was broken on the morning of the rally. Anybody who was following the protests with a degree of c...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Manisha Pande, and Raman Kirpal are joined by Aunindyo Chakravarty, a former senior managing editor at NDTV India and NDTV Profit who currently works with NewsClick . The discussion begins with the transcripts of the purported WhatsApp chats between Republic ’s Arnab Goswami and former BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta. Abhinandan says,...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal are joined by former Newslaundry reporter Rahul Kotiyal, who currently works with Dainik Bhaskar .  Starting off with new developments in the farmer protests at the borders of Delhi, Raman talks about how the Supreme Court’s order to stay the implementation of the farm laws might impact the...

This week on NL Hafta, it's an all- Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande, Anand Vardhan, and Jayashree Arunachalam. The conversation starts with the big news of Trump supporters storming the Capitol in Washington DC. Abhinandan and Raman discuss the news coverage and the speech Trump made prior to the siege. The panelists also discuss the stand that the American medi...

This week on NL Hafta, it's an all-Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Jayashree Arunachalam. The conversation starts with Mehraj explaining how the recently concluded District Development Council elections in Kashmir were aimed primarily at "depoliticising" the region's politics. To listen to the full episode,  subscribe  to ...

This week on Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande, and Jayashree Arunachalam are joined by Priyanka Pulla, an independent journalist, and Jammi N Rao, an independent public health physician. The conversation begins with the detection of new strains of Covid in the UK and South Africa. Jammi points out that the two variants are “very different” with different mutatio...

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kripal and Mehraj D Lone of Newslaundry are joined by Patricia Mukhim, the editor of the Shillong Times .  The conversation begins with Patricia explaining why she resigned from the Editors Guild of India. The guild had shown her no support when she was targeted for questioning the authorities over inaction in a case of ethnic discrimination and vi...

Timecodes 2:37 - Headlines 6:08 - Farmer's Protest 21:59 - Arvind Kejriwal on House Arrest 30:48 - Love Jihad 35:15 - Central Vista Project 50:44 - Jallikattu Goes For Oscar 52:35 - DGCI Asks Serum And Bharat Biotech For More Data And NDTV Fake News 1:09:50 - Love Jihad 1:13:21 - Subscriber Mails 1:26:55 - Recommendations This week Newslaundry panel’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Jayashree Aru...

Timecodes 04:35   -   Headlines 09:15  -   Farmer protests 13:01   -  Media coverage of farmer protests 1:04:03   -   Rajinikanth to launch political party in January 1:05:43   -   UN secretary general Antonio Gutteres’ speech on the environment 1:09:26   -   Amit Malviya's tweet flagged on Twitter 1:22:20  -   Subscriber mails...

Timecodes 4:14 - Headlines 7:51 - Cyclone Nivar hits Chennai and Puducherry 14:43 - Kerala withdraws Police Act amendment 28:57 - Farmer protests 44:05 - Jallikattu goes to the Oscars 47:24 - UP brings ‘love jihad’ ordinance 1:12:15 - ED summons Shiv Sena MLA 1:16:57 - Subscriber mail 1:27:47 - Sushil Modi accuses Lalu Prasad Yadav of running political show from behind bars 1:32:23 - Recommendatio...

Timecodes 00:00 - Introduction and headlines 11:18 - The current race for vaccines 28:22 - Freedom of speech and state of Indian media 01:04:12 - Subscriber letters 01:20:39 - India not being part of the RCEP 01:27:53 - Chitra and Smita’s recommendations 01:36:52 - Subscriber letters 01:59:21 - Recommendations In this week’s Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, and Mehraj D Lone...

Timecodes 00:00 - Introduction and headlines 08:50 - Biden’s win in the US presidential election 42:04 - Arnab’s Goswami’s arrest and bail, and freedom of speech 01:10:08 - Subscriber letters 01:41:42 - Recommendations This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Anand Vardhan are joined by Joanna Slater, the India bureau chief of the Washington Post . Starti...