NL Hafta

This week’s episode of NL Hafta features an all-star panel of Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal. They are joined by Banjot Kaur, health and public policy correspondent for Down To Earth magazine. The conversation begins with a round-up of Covid developments from the past weeks, including progress being made in India and abroad towards t...

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News . First up, the panel discusses the Wall Street Journal report on political partisanship within Facebook India. The panelists talk about Facebook’s “special relationship” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, how news dissemination has changed over the past decade,...

In this week’s episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of the Caravan magazine. The conversation begins with an analysis of the events surrounding last week’s attacks on three Caravan journalists while they were interviewing residents in Northeast Delhi’s Subhash Mohalla. One of the journ...

In this week’s episode, the in-house panel featuring Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Raman Kripal is joined by Mayank Shekhar, a film critic and recipient of the ‘Ramnath Goenka Award. He’s also the author of Amazon’s bestselling book, ‘ Name Place Animal Thing ’ and also has a podcast titled ‘Sit With Hitlist’ The discussion begins with the problematic coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput’s deat...

In this week’s Newslaundry’s panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kripal, and Anand Vardhan are joined by Suraj Yengde, an award winning scholar, author, and activist in the field of caste, race, and ethnicity studies and labour migration in the Global-south. Currently, he is a senior research fellow at Harvard-Kennedy School. Suraj has also been nominated for the ‘Sahitya Akademi Awar...

In this week’s NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande are joined by Sushanta Talukdar, editor of NEZINE , an online magazine focusing on India’s Northeast region. The discussion starts off with the Assam floods, which has affected over 28 lakh people so far. Floods are a recurring issue during the monsoons in Assam, but the government has still no...

In this week’s NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kripal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Suhasini Haider, diplomatic editor of the Hindu .  The conversation kicks off with discussing how Iran dropped India from the Chabahar-Zahedan rail project. Abhinandan asks Suhasini how this might affect India. “There’s this kind of FOMO. Right now, you don’t w...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Raman Kirpal, and Anand Vardhan are joined by two guests: Mohan Guruswamy, author and chairman-founder of the Centre for Policy Alternatives & The Guruswamy Center, and Tanmoy Goswami, the Correspondent ’s sanity correspondent who writes on mental health. Among other things, the panel talks about the I...

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande discuss gangster Vikas Dubey’s arrest, Jyotiraditya Scindia’s speech, and cancel culture. The discussion starts with Scindia naming former chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh in a speech, where he reminded them that he’s still around and powerful. Talking about Scindia’s le...

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Sandhya Ravishankar, award-winning journalist and editor of the Lede . The conversation centres on police brutality in India, in the context of the custodial deaths of a father and son in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi. Sandhya talks about how the vernacular med...

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Anoo Bhuyan, a reporter with IndiaSpend currently writing on healthcare. Among other things, the panel talks about the healthcare crisis and challenges brought about by the Covid-19 outbreak, the fire in Assam’s Baghjan oil field, and two important media-related developme...

In this edition of Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Ajai Shukla, a defence journalist, former colonel of the Indian army, and current consulting editor at Business Standard . The panel discusses the developments in and the broader implications of the India-China border flare-up, Patanjali’s Coronil debacle, and the Jagannath Rath...

In this edition of Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Ajai Shukla, a defence journalist, former colonel of the Indian army, and current consulting editor at Business Standard .  Ajai explains the chronology of events from April onward at the border. He says Chinese soldiers “marched into three different sectors of India and occ...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundr y’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande are joined by Emily Schmall, South Asia correspondent for the Associated Press .  The panel discusses the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed. “Polls show that most Americans are in favour of these protests,” Emily says. “You can get a sense of that by seeing how cor...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Shoaib Daniyal, associate editor at Scroll .  The panel starts with a discussion on Cyclone Amphan and the resultant devastation in West Bengal. Shoaib says: “This was so fearsome that it came into Kolkata also, which is a good 100 km from the sea...It was a pretty scary sight that day...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Raman Kirpal, and Anand Vardhan are joined by two guests: Mohan Guruswamy, author and chairman-founder of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, and Tanmoy Goswami, the Correspondent ’s sanity correspondent who writes on mental health.  Abhinandan asks Mohan what triggered the Chinese action. Mohan specu...

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Anoo Bhuyan, a reporter with IndiaSpend currently writing on healthcare.  While explaining how the fire in the Baghjan oil field came about, Mehraj says: “They have been trying to douse the flames, but it will at least take a month.” He also draws attention to the ec...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundr y’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande are joined by Emily Schmall, South Asia correspondent for the Associated Press .  The panel discusses the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed. “Polls show that most Americans are in favour of these protests,” Emily says. “You can get a sense of that by seeing how cor...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry ’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Shoaib Daniyal, associate editor at Scroll .  Discussing the rerouting of Shramik Special trains, Mehraj says, “I am just at a loss. Even incompetence alone doesn’t explain this. This is a time when they are running a fraction of the usual number of trains...It is not just that these t...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by our in-house team of Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan.  Discussing the recent border dispute between India and Nepal, Anand describes the dispute’s historical context and the causes of the current fracas. Mehraj argues that this could be attributed to India’s “projection of power” since the start of the ne...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by our in-house team of Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan. Talking about the Covid-19 cases at Zee News , and Newslaundry ’s recent report about the cluster, Abhinandan says the employees who tested positive “might not get the sympathy that they should get, because of how Sudhir Chaudhary and other people like him...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Anand Vardhan of Newslaundry are joined by Shelly Walia, senior editor at the Quint. Rather surprisingly, this episode kicks off with a healthy debate on whether litti chokha belongs to Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. The panellists then engage in an extended discussion on their favourite regional delicacies. Mehraj finally...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal of Newslaundry are joined by Neha Dixit, journalist and professor at Ashoka University. The podcast starts with a discussion on media reports on the Delhi riots. Neha says, “Lots of people are claiming that their relatives are missing. Dead bodies have been dumped at the hospital with no identification m...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan, and Mehraj D Lone of Newslaundry are joined by Kapil Komireddi, author and journalist. They start with a discussion on the Delhi violence. Abhinandan asks the panellists how precisely they will describe what happened. Was it “riot” or “pogrom”? Kapil believes it was more than a riot and, had it continued to escalate, coul...

In this episode of NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone of Newslaundry are joined by Suhasini Haider, diplomatic editor of the Hindu newspaper, and Dr Arjun Dang, CEO of Dr Dang’s Labs. Starting off with a discussion on the coronavirus pandemic, Abhinandan wonders why India’s approach to containing it differs from that prescribed by the WHO, and what impact this will have....