A review of NL Hafta by Bimal, Prateek, Vivek, Rajat, Harjant and Dhiraj

Dear NL Team,

Congrats on your 150th episode. Keep the good work going.

My letter (Hadiya case article) was read in the 150th episode and the views in it were completely misrepresented. The letter was “long” and Nikku got bored of reading it. My suggestion will be not to read such letters. It’s much better than being lectured about something that wasn’t mentioned in the letter at all.

Again I don’t expect this letter to be read or discussed… do note that these (below) were the three points that I highlighted and wanted to know the opinion of the writer of that piece and the NL Hafta team:

Q: Whether the court/state can interfere in a personal choice? If so, under what conditions can it do so?

Answer: Absolutely not, unless it’s directly linked to a criminal act.

Q: Is a personal choice correct or wrong? Who gets to decide on it and what should be done about it?

Answer: Social opinion can and should weigh in on the merit of the decision when it is compromising the liberty of an individual without interfering with the freedom of making such decisions.

Q: When is a marriage considered valid, when is it void? Why is the highest court getting into the merit of it?

Answer: In a legal marriage, other than the two individuals, the state is also a party to the agreement and hence its opinion matters as much as the two other parties’.

Regards,

Bimal Kumar

Hi Hafta team,

Trying to keep it short. I love your production every week and am not a mufatkhor 🙂

According to the book Blink by Malcom Gladwell, most of us have subconscious biases but the civil society expects us to behave differently. For example, I think I have formed opinions on the so-called “Left” by just one sample set: the almost criminal behaviour of the mess workers’ union in my college. That in my mind makes it crystal clear why this ideology is a template of mediocrity and criminal enterprise.

Coming to the “right-wing” in our unfortunate nation, the criminals/lumpen elements who cannot join the system-supervised structures are almost destined to be found there, so in my view it is just a balance of the equation.

Abhinandan keeps harping about the fact that bankers/tech/accountants have no morals about where the next cheque is coming from, but at least there is some personal accountability there. There is 20 per cent churn/culling in the big banks that I am aware of. What is the firing rate in the government? My last two hopes were AAP and Modi for different reasons 🙂 Both of them are big government apologists now.

On a more philosophical bent, I think the Left/Marxist ideology is stuck in the 19th century concept of determinism. I am actually very surprised that a scientist of the calibre of Ranga uncle wants to see all issues as black and white. For me, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Godel’s incompleteness theorem gave formal proof why things can never be black and white. If we accept that, the corollary is that the welfare state is an incorrect scale up on a village/tribe model and unnatural. So what is actually unnatural about social Darwinism (of course it is abhorrent but so is cancer)?

Regards,

Prateek

Hi NL Team,

I wanted to write about something that Abhinandan, Anand and Manisha said on the NDTV firings. The discussion on the morality of celebrating the retrenchment of staff can be seen through the lens of the stock market. When the notice to the stock exchanges came in, there was a slight flutter in our newsroom.

The stock price just went up. I think it reacted to the news and people started buying the stock because they thought the company’s margins would improve. This is actually the real world. I don’t mean to belittle the importance of the news. I am just trying to show that, devoid of our moral perspectives, the world just runs with the best opportunity to make money. And this is the problem with free market capitalism. Empathy is a very dear commodity when it comes to betting against firing of hoards of people.

Here’s the thing, though it doesn’t have to be. But everybody is happy with the way things go. We even had a story where someone said what I just told you guys about why the stock price went up. That’s what I wanted to connect to the subscription model.

Through the subscription model, you would acquire equity of your subscribers, hence their interest. But you don’t have to give away editorial decisions. When there are folks who advertise on a platform because you are selling their viewers/readers to them. In a way selling equity the reverse way. That’s why I appreciate every time Abhinandan defends the subscriber-funded model.

I just hope you guys manage to convince enough people to subscribe before the 2019 election. A huge team to cover that election could also change the way people see and consume their elections through their mobile phones.

Sorry for going on a tangent. I hope you guys do well.

Regards,

Vivek Ananth

I am a subscriber. This is my second letter. I will keep my sentences and letter short, even if that makes me sound a little less fancy. I have been listening to you for more than a year now. One topic that keeps coming up often is BIAS. I agree with Abhinandan that everyone is biased. But somehow I think I also understand how Anand R can feel that he is unbiased because probably he tries so hard to be so. (probably successfully to a great extent, but IMO not completely). But the question is about our expectation that the media be unbiased, and when I say media I mean individual channels. Let’s take a very real case scenario. We know there are tonnes of channels out there being controlled by the BJP. One prominent TV channel biased towards the Congress is NDTV. Now if in this environment of propaganda by BJP-supported channels, NDTV becomes neutral, how can you prevent the dialogue from getting one-sided in favour of the BJP? So probably it is only right that channels stay biased and have fair competition like political parties have in Parliament. That is the democracy model. It is not perfect but still ensures a balance of power. Probably our expectation from every channel to be unbiased in unachievable in a capitalistic world.

Looking at it through another angle, do you think journalists should be activists? If you see something wrong happening in front of your eyes, would you stop it or just shoot it as a piece of documentary to bring to your show? If you think that journalists should care about the world they live in and try to bring in some change, why should they not be allowed to go all the way to side with the party which they think is more moral, ethical or effective?

What does the panel think about this?

PS: You need to bring back your weekly/regular programmes such as Clothesline on YouTube. Not sure what is happening with Why So Serious, but we do have a gap of genuine John Oliver/Trevor Noah-like series. Humour is expensive but also very effective.

Rajat Aggarwal

A loyal subscriber still waiting for the new Newslaundry podcast app before I can ask my friends to subscribe too.

Dear Abhinandan and NL Team,

I’m a huge fan of NL Hafta, the NL Team, and truly value the work that y’all do! Up until recently, I was quite happy with the content my subscription helped produce, however lately I’ve been repeatedly disappointed on two different fronts. Therefore, I’ve decided to hold off on renewing my subscription until the following concerns are addressed:

1: Bring back Awful & Awesome

As a US-based subscribe, Awful and Awesome was my lifeline to Indian pop culture and cinema. Plus it offered much needed respite from the craziness of Indian news and politics. It was an essential part of your programming, and there’s now a void in my latest knowledge of Indian society without this show. Mr Sekhri has been making vague promises about bringing it back sometime in the future. Once I learn of a more concrete date for the show’s return, I promise to not only renew but double my contribution.

2: Please provide additional context on NL Hafta (this is more of a suggestion than demand)

Many of NL listeners and subscribers (like myself) are not based in India. We don’t have access to up-to-date Indian news. Often NL panellists launch a discussion without offering adequate context and background information (for eg, most recently while discussing the “2G scam” on your latest episode, the context and background was only provided towards the end of the discussion). The panellists often take it for granted that listeners already know what they are commenting on, leaving many (like myself) lost, confused, and ultimately un-engaged.

This is a gripe that can be lobbied towards most Indian new media, and mainstream entities are far more egregious in violating this central tenet of journalism: don’t confuse your audience. As novelist Shirley Jackson once said, “A confused reader is an antagonistic reader.” The same can be applied to your listeners. Given that NL is trying to set itself apart, I think it would be useful for NL journalists and panellists to adopt the best practices standard among the newsrooms of highly-regarded publications such as NY Times, National Public Radio, BBC etc. (many of which you guys often cite in your “weekly recommendations” segment). Their reportage always begins with a quick summary or recap of what happened before, and who is involved how… I hope you are getting my point here.

Thank for your time and keep up the good work!

Best regards,

Harjant Gill

Hi there team,

I have a few views on the 2G and other scams of that time. I did try to articulate it with an article but then… (Mallya NPAs, etc…) I did read the article Anand put out but at a lot of places I felt like playing devil’s advocate myself and asking the following questions:

1) Is/was the telecom ministry “bound” to accept all the recommendations of TRAI. If yes, then there is illegality. If not, as I am presuming, it was not illegal.

2) Abhinandan spoke about how and why the two parties cannot take on corruption. (Ironically, the Jan Sangh came up on Indira’s illegal plans). Agreed. But then the question that also needs to be asked is whether the laws have changed to prevent the 2G “SCAM”. Mind you, India was graduating to 3G spectrum a few years prior to that. And now to 4G (the reason why re-selling of spectrum was a flop). But then there should be will from the legislature or as you put it on Consti-tuition, the constant pressure from pressure groups (who are also lobbyists in a way).

3) The point Mr Sekhri makes about re-selling. Sir, I presume you have proof for it (other than opinion pieces of newspapers). I am sure Raman Kirpal sir would. But what I would like to know is “was the reselling illegal? i.e is there a law which says so?” Yes I am aware that laws from a different country can be used in these cases (for which I presume the case has to reach the Supreme Court first). But was there a law deeming it illegal?

I say all this because if all the illegality is true, then the “TENDER document” in itself should be good enough to indict the guilty party.

Legally speaking, I rest my case by saying corporate/orporate governance laws in the country are WEAK. Hence people get away. Remember they hire lawyers to find loopholes. In fact they hire them before the scam, to do the due diligence.

“Sab miley huey hain” is an easy Indian jugaad to sidetrack the discussion. Mr Anand, the laws are not strong enough. And we as people display staunch resistance to change. Rape laws before and after Nirbhaya are good enough to validate my point. Nirbhayas are still happening but over the last few years speedy justice has also happened, because of a strong law. Pradyuman’s (murder) case also has the juvenile being tried as an adult, I am presuming because of changes in law due to juvenile involved in the Nirbhaya case.

I just thought this counter-ish view for all negative sentiments on the state of law in the country.

Keep up the good work, guys. I stand corrected if some of the above views are incorrect.

Best regards,

Dhiraj

P.S: (500 words is not very long. As a subscriber, I deserve the extra 100 words.)