A Review of #NLHafta from Tanay Sukumar and Dibyasunder Nayak

Dear NL team,

I am Tanay, a Mumbai-based journalist. I am a regular listener of NL Hafta and Let’s Talk About (and a subscriber). Here’s my take on NL Hafta 110. Would love to hear your views.

Saurabh Dwivedi on Hafta recently: “…the majority community in this country – read Hindus – (tends to) have a hatred for Muslims. This is the unfortunate truth… There is a very small chunk of people like you and me who don’t care what the caste of the other person is.”

Abhinandan Sekhri: “Do you really think so?”

Dwivedi: “Sir, this is the truth; it’s bitter, and politically incorrect. I don’t say all of them do, but…”

In this podcast (23’20” to 28’00”), Saurabh Dwivedi talks of the prejudices Hindus and Muslims possibly hold against each other in the hinterlands of India because of a mutual distance and lack of exchange. He mentions these in response to a comment that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh shows the voters probably do not care about divisive communal agenda.

I grew up in Delhi but my origins lie in Bihar, a state that loves to value its religious and caste divides more than it loves its religion or caste itself, not much different from Uttar Pradesh. Having observed the local discourse around me, I know what Dwivedi is talking about. What has triggered this piece is the Newslaundry panel’s apparent disbelief at what he said (and also, the panel’s disbelief at the voters’ reaction to the demonetisation disaster).

Being able to acknowledge the conservative truths of the masses despite upholding and promoting liberal values is today a taboo at best and rarity at worst. Liberals I meet and listen to have often shown blatant denial of social conservative realities of prejudice, divide, misinformation, and discrimination – traditionally powered by the old India (of divisive speeches, organizations, and rath yatras), and now increasingly by the New, Digital India (of institutionally funded trolls, fake news, and WhatsApp forwards). (The link is for my article on this topic: “Fake News is the Opium of the Masses”)

The criticism of the propaganda is incomplete without understanding that the propaganda has already had an effect even before we took the pain to criticise. The votes have already translated from a million to two million, and mindsets have been reset back from the 20th to the 19th century.

This denial is visible when TV pundits still seem to believe that the killing of a Muslim man for storing beef and the suicide of a Dalit scholar is really a problem to a large portion of the electorate that orgasms at the idea of a Hindu nation, delivered with the topping of development (in that order). And no, Indians are not that way. Vicious mindgames have been played with our intelligence for far too long.

Public intellectuals and GDP enthusiasts whose logic (unfortunately) fails in front of emotions were in denial all the while, believing that demonetisation was a political risk and could have hit the vote bank. They realised it was never meant to – but not before the election results. The propaganda of a Hindu nation, served with the topping of development and the spicy sadistic façade of hurting the rich – and the package delivered right at your doorstep by the Messiah himself. Have our analysts forgotten social psychology and world history?

The liberal discourse will find it difficult to promote its progressive winds until it learns to work with the status quo, and not deny or ignore it condescendingly.

Disagreement must not mean denial. In the polarised atmosphere, the burden of understanding the other side lies with the liberals. Social conservatives are, by definition, comfortable with the way things have always been, in matters of religion, society and culture. They do not have any obligation to want to consider liberal values that talk about progress into an unseen future. Liberals, however, do have access to the present-day sociological realities, and it’s unintelligent to ignore them or be unaware of them.

Hi Team Newslaundry,

I wanted to write this mail a long ago but a blank mail with the above subject line kept on languishing in the drafts section. However, your recent survey nudged me and I want to make a few suggestions which I feel the survey couldn’t capture. So here I am writing this email at 1 O’clock in the night.

First, something about Hafta, my favorite section on NL. It’s a shame for me that I was introduced very late to Hafta, as late as episode 95. Before that, I used to follow NL only for Clothesline, Can you take it and to read Anand’s article. I am not sure why you guys have stopped producing Clothesline and Can you take it. But more on that later.

I love Hafta because it helps me to think. These days I do more research on both sides on any issue, then form an opinion and wait for Hafta so that I can see what the NL panel thinks on the same. I love Hafta because it’s not like a regular panel discussion where the panelists are concerned about what the listeners should listen, rather it’s like the listeners eavesdropping a conversation between some of the sharpest and most analytical minds on some of the recent topics. It helps  in understanding how you guys think, develop your arguments for or against a topic and present them. It’s much better than pretentious TV debate panels where most of the panelists are there either to propagate their ideology or to build their reputation in front of the public.

Before Hafta, I was only following the works of Madhu Trehan Ma’am and Anand Sir on Newslaundry. I am a big fan of Anand sir and often amazed with his vast knowledge on several topics ranging from politics and policy to Science and Technology. He comes across as someone who is well prepared to talk on something and have done meticulous research before speaking on any subject. I had the good fortune of meeting him on the sidelines of the TEDxXIMB event where he was to deliver a talk.

Anyway, with Hafta, I have become closer to the Newslaundry team. I am really impressed with Manisha’s work, mostly her critiques of media. She is a very promising talent. I like Deepanjana because she always provides a different dimension to any discussion. Despite being an AAP suporter (:-P), Abhinandan is likeable and his presence helps the discussion to remain comprehensible for common junta like us.

Now some suggestions. First thing, media critique is your USP. You should build everything else on the top of that. However, it feels like to become a news and opinion portal, you are ignoring the factor which got you your first set and perhaps the most loyal reader base. There are no regular extensive pieces on several incidents and trends in the media industry. There are no new Clothesline episode since Dec 2016. Some of your most viral videos are ‘Can you take it’ interviews which have also been discontinued. These days, media critique has become an extra which should be your mainstay, I believe.

Even, on the news and opinion front, you are most of the times reactive. I keep tracking the website throughout the day but most of the posts come only in late second half of the day. As if the reporters come to the office in the morning and keep researching throughout the day, file their stories in the afternoon and then go back home. Distribution of the posts should be throughout the day. Two kind of reports can help maintaining the uniformity of posts: one, ground reports (and NL Sena is a brilliant idea) and two, data based reports. 

Coming to subscriptions, I feel the basic idea of your model is flawed. Even though you call this a subscription based model, I feel Newslaundry is a donation based model. People donate for causes and ideologies. When you are asking people to subscribe to keep news free, you are basically giving them a cause to support. So that’s basically donations, but in fixed amounts. The real downside with this is that it depends on the mood and volatility of the donor. In a real subscriber led model, the focus is on creating real value for the subscribers in which the subscribers feel engaged. Currently there is not much difference in terms of value between the free version and NL subscription. Only difference are the podcasts. Also not much differences are there between different types of subscriptions. Rather keeping only one, or at max two levels of subscription (with time period variations) will work wonders. Once there is considerable difference between what free version has and what subscribers get, the entry level subscription rate should be slashed as it will attract more people to subscribe. Once the rates are low, the subscriber base will grow. But again, I am stressing they should feel real value else they will feel cheated and discontinue their subscription. One more level of subscription you can keep which makes them feel good (using Maslow’s hierarchy of need principle). Things like free passes to NL events, opportunity to interact with Team NL etc. The amount for this level can be kept considerably high. The base will be small for this level, but the price will take care of the revenues. Again for this, you have to devise city wise events, seminars and talks which your subscribers can attend. These subscribers will be your influencers in the society.

Another area where Newslaundry is falling behind is social media. You need to closely analyse why most of your posts on FB and twitter receive very low engagement despite having a huge reader-base.

I think I have ranted enough for the time being. And yes, forgot to tell you that I am a proud subscriber and not a mufatkhor. 🙂

Thanks & Regards,
Dibyasundar Nayak