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The Chief Justice of India’s remark that the polls in question were “only by-elections” in West Bengal is where this Hafta discussion begins. Abhinandan Sekhri calls it “a bit alarming”, and says similar casual comments have come up in earlier hearings. Neha Rathi, a Supreme Court lawyer and a petitioner in the SIR cases, says the Supreme Court was the right forum, but argues that the reason behind voter deletions in Bengal remains opaque. Of the “logical discrepancy” ground, she says, “there is no notification about that, it’s still a mystery.” Shahrukh Alam, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, calls the SIR a “gambit” and says the Election Commission has “got away with” its “big little power plays”. She says she and others are pushing back on the state’s legal responsibility, but asks, “What about its moral responsibility?” Rinchen Norbu cites data showing that the share of people who trust the Election Commission “a lot” fell from 50.8 percent in 2019 to 43 percent in 2024, according to a recent CSDS-Lokniti survey that appeared in the Hindustan Times. TNM executive editor Sudipto Mondal widens the lens to the judiciary itself. “The judiciary is the greatest threat to Indian democracy. Not from today, from its inception,” he says. He says a brave judge is needed, but “in the long term one hero is not going to save us.” Subscribe to watch the full discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa challenges the framing of the Election Commission’s internal rift. Asked by Abhinandan Sekhri whether the “dissenting notes” amount to genuine dissent, Lavasa flips the premise, arguing that if two Election Commissioners share one view and a third disagrees, it is the third (the Chief Election Commissioner in this case) who is dissenting, not the two being labelled as such. The conversation then turns to the changes made to Form 6 during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Lavasa argues that the Commission overstepped its authority regardless of whether all three commissioners were in agreement. As he says, “The Election Commission of India is not competent to make these changes, because they fall under the principle of subordinate legislation, which ought to be approved by the competent authority — in this case, the government.” Manisha Pande brings up the case of Goa, where election officers who had verified wrongly-deleted voters were reportedly unable to restore them to the rolls due to what the Commission described as a “software” limitation. Lavasa is unconvinced that this explanation absolves the Commission of responsibility, offering the segment’s standout line: “Whenever you use technology, it is used to support the law. It cannot impede the enforcement of law or the taking of action in accordance with the law.” Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan Bilal & Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Rinchen Norbu are joined by Anupam Manur, Professor of Economics at the Takshashila Institution, and Mihira Sood, Supreme Court lawyer specialising in women’s rights. The panel opens the discussion by examining the government’s decision to introduce a 0.4% fee on UPI merchant transactions above Rs 2,000, asking what the move means for a payment system that has become central to everyday transactions in India. Anupam Manur acknowledges that UPI generates wider economic benefits, but argues that the current model also creates a problem: who ultimately bears the cost of running the system? He explains that the cost of operating UPI is substantial, while the government subsidises only a portion of it. Manur says, “When UPI came about, India was miles ahead of the world in some sense. It was truly revolutionary.” But he argues that the costs leave new entrants with insufficient incentive, which has affected private-sector innovation. “Private players are just not incentivized to innovate.” The discussion then moves from the economics of UPI to the politics of its messaging. Abhinandan argues that the government has often reduced complicated policy questions to easily marketable slogans: “I think the problem is, like many things that Mr. Modi does ever since he’s come, let’s count his slogans. He’s a fantastic ad man.” The panel then turns to the BJP’s push for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). Mihira offers a qualified position. She makes clear that she supports the idea of a UCC in principle, particularly as a route towards greater equality. But she distinguishes that principle from the particular version being discussed. She says, “What I have a problem with is this particular type of Uniform Civil Code because it is not based in secularism and it is not based in feminism.” Rinchen questions whether we should even call this a ‘uniform civil code’, given the carve-outs that exist for Scheduled Tribes in states like Uttarakhand, where the BJP has implemented its version of it. He also argues that the focus on polygamy in the UCC debate distracts from the larger issue of inheritance rights for women. “This whole bigamy, this whole polygamy thing is a red herring, it’s overstated,” he adds, while Mihira breaks down the real legal questions surrounding inheritance if the BJP actually cared about women’s rights. Timecodes 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:07:03 – Headlines 00:12:01 – MDR on UPI  00:44:03 – Anupam’s Recommendations 00:48:32 – Manisha on Brazil politics  00:55:32 – UCC  01:25:52 – Mihira’s Recommendations 01:28:32 – Letters 01:46:08 – Recommendations  Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Saurav Kr. Ranjan & Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal and Anand Vardhan are joined by urban geographer and researcher Rashee Mehra to discuss Delhi's continuing housing crisis. Rashee traces the problem to a structural failure in planning. Using the example of Satya Niketan, a “regularised JJ colony”, she explains how a neighbourhood can be made legal while the construction within it remains unauthorised. “It is actually a very confusing governance structure that we have created in the city,” she says, pointing to the overlapping jurisdictions of the central government, state government and municipal bodies. “That leads to questions of whose responsibility it is.” She argues that Delhi’s housing problem cannot be reduced to a question of illegal construction alone. “Housing has to be adequate, affordable, viable, sustainable. Where housing is affordable, it’s not adequate, and where housing is adequate, it’s not affordable. And that’s your catch-22 kind of situation.” Anand adds that the crisis extends well beyond university students. He notes that landlords in the city fall into two categories: “One who has made investments in these houses, and one who is living on the rent only... they have less incentive to invest because all the rent that they get, they spend somewhere.” Subscribe to watch the full discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The discussion opens with Abhinandan Sekhri talking about the flood of commentary around India's quarterly GDP figures over the past two days.  Much of it, he says, is “just completely wrong” – although still a healthier public debate than recent controversies over food or language politics. He calls it a small win for Indian media, even if the conversation isn’t always well-informed. Vivek Kaul addresses ex-finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg's viral ‘2.5% quarterly GDP growth rate' claim, saying Garg “did what the BJP has been doing to us all these years.”  “He made a quick point, he made a simplistic point, which was wrong,” Vivek says, adding that by the time fact-checkers responded, the claim had already spread widely. He then turns to the GDP methodology shift from a 2011–12 base year to 2022–23, a recalibration meant to reflect changes in the economy's structure. He notes that private consumption, recalculated under the new method, has been revised downward by close to $1 trillion over four years – a correction he says went largely unreported by business media. Puja Mehra builds on this, explaining that GDP estimates depend heavily on the data sources and proxies used, particularly for India’s large informal economy, which lacks reliable direct data. “GDP, you get to define what GDP is and then measure it in the way you have defined it,” she says, pushing back on the common misconception that GDP should behave like a fixed, universal measurement, “unlike weighing one kilogram of fruit”. Subscribe to watch the full conversation. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan. Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s Hafta panel tackled two connected threads: the anti-reservation protests and the suicide of an IIT Delhi student, Rishikesh Kumar.  Joining the Hafta panel this week were Dr Aqsa Shaikh, one of India’s first transgender doctors and a member of the Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force on Student Suicide Prevention in Higher Education, and Dr Sameena Dalwai, a law professor, writer and researcher who specialises in gender, sexuality and law.  Panellists pushed back on the “merit versus reservation” framing, arguing it obscures how privilege is already built into ‘merit’, and noted how complicated affirmative action becomes in India’s caste and tribal contexts, unlike the US’s simpler racial binary. The discussion also delved into other reservation debates that include EWS, women, and transgender persons.  On student suicides, the panel cited data showing roughly 13,000 suicides a year nationally, with higher rates in hypercompetitive spaces like IITs and medical colleges. The panellists traced this pressure back to a coaching culture that begins in school. Subscribe to watch the full discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the Hafta panel discussed the BJP’s push to expand its presence on Instagram, a shift Manisha Pande linked to the party being caught off guard by the memes and reels that emerged from the CJP protests. Anurag Minus Verma argued the BJP’s problem isn’t taking Instagram seriously – it’s that its content is unsuited to the platform. Right-wing pages, he said, largely cycle through three or four genres: doxing, threats, punching-down humour and “catching hypocrisy”.  “These things have a shelf life because these things are not cool,” he said, adding that Instagram runs on a post-irony aesthetic that demands ideological looseness rather than stiffness, something he argued right-wingers struggle with. Abhinandan Sekhri connected this to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, suggesting being famous for sheer stupidity, as with Ravi Kishan’s viral moments, now functions as its own currency. Manisha argued that trolling, which works on X (formerly Twitter), doesn’t quite translate to Instagram because the latter is a visual, face-based medium, where putting a face to a thought requires courage in a way anonymous text does not.  She also said the BJP’s messaging remains stuck in a 2014 register, still invoking “urban Naxals” and Umar Khalid, and contrasted this with a Rajasthan schoolchild’s viral video on poor school infrastructure, arguing that dismissing such concerns as “dimaagi Naxal” sidesteps the real issue of young people demanding better education. Subscribe to watch the full discussion.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Independence Day, NL Hafta’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Rinchen Norbu are joined by historian and author Sam Dalrymple.   The discussion began with the question: Was the India we inherited inevitable, or could history have taken a very different course? Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav .Sound by Anil Kumar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Meta, Abhinandan Sekhri asked whether the platform has the bandwidth to process takedown requests in India at that scale, or whether “it’s actually a phase where it’s the Wild West”.  Independent tech journalist Abhishek Baxi agreed with that characterisation and explained that Meta’s automated moderation system – a response to takedown requests in India doubling year on year – was behind the technical glitch that pulled down PM Modi’s video from Facebook. Meta’s global affairs chief had to fly down to apologise to IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw directly. Manisha Pande pointed to a recent instance where an interview with a CJP protester, conducted by Priyanshi Sharma, a journalist with Peak TV,  was repeatedly taken down from Instagram and reinstated without explanation, alongside three of Newslaundry’s own videos that are restricted in India.  “I don’t think these platforms are going to fight the freedom of speech fight for us,” she said. “They want to continue doing business here.” On the ruling establishment’s inability to figure out Instagram like they did WhatsApp, Shardool added that it was “a sad fact that a government governing 1.4 billion people doesn't understand Instagram” and that “it takes one conversation with creators to understand how the platform works, but instead every viral trend is seen as a conspiracy.” Abhinandan went on to argue that US tech giants “don't have our interest in mind at all”, and would readily compromise on user protections if it meant preserving profit and market access, leaving Indians caught “between two [powers] who basically don't have your interest in mind.” Subscribe to watch the entire discussion.  Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav .Sound by Anil Kumar . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the 600th episode of NL Hafta, the panel – Abhinandan Sekhri and Anand Vardhan – are joined by Hafta alumni Jayashree Arunachalam and Mehraj Lone, who set the usual rules aside for an “unpopular opinions” special. Abhinandan’s own unpopular opinion is that the liberal “snowflake” stereotype often holds up in practice, with an inability among some liberals, particularly in journalist and writer circles active on social media, to sit with positions or people they disagree with. Mehraj traces the “snowflake” problem to what he describes as the hyper-individualisation at the heart of modern liberalism, i.e. the elevation of individual grievance and “triggers” above community consensus. He links this to the broader Western backlash against “wokeism” and what some commentators are calling a post-liberal turn. Jayashree closes out the segment on “cancel culture”, arguing it’s often just accountability rebranded. Getting arrested for something illegal isn’t cancellation, she argues. “Being blacklisted for saying a certain thing isn’t being cancelled. It’s just facing a consequence.” Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav .Sound by Anil Kumar . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Hafta episode features author Chetan Bhagat unpacking why a youth-led street protest snowballed the way it did, and what it reveals about how anger travels online. Abhinandan Sekhri opens with a mea culpa on having dismissed “Gen Z” too readily. Bhagat is explicit in his assertion that the protest itself “would have been limited” were it not for visuals like that of a Delhi Police officer in riot gear and a helmet, wielding a baton, chasing a 16-year-old girl. It was footage like this, not the underlying policy grievances, that he calls the “content gold” – the emotionally engaging visual that made the protest go viral. Drawing on examples from Gujarat, Satara, and a bouncer-contractor's Instagram post racking up 400,000 likes, Bhagat argues this generation instinctively performs for the camera – as captured in a viral Mumbai clip where teenagers laugh off a cop threatening to plant drugs on them. His point is that virality isn’t accidental; an audience-literate generation produces it. A recurring metaphor – an argument that "it isn't really about a dirty plate" – is used to explain why the protest isn’t really about paper leaks, even if that's the government's chosen frame. Finally, Bhagat also reflects on being called a “Modi bhakt” then later a critic, and his defence of centrism as pragmatism rather than fence-sitting. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan .Sound by Naresh. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the latest episode of Hafta, the panel discusses whether political protest movements need ideological anchoring to succeed, sparked by a debate over the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) lack of clear ideological convictions. Poornima Joshi, the resident editor of The Hindu Businessline, argues that successful mass movements of the last decade – even ostensibly issue-based ones – have tended to carry ideological undertones. In addition to ideological moorings, Rinchen Norbu notes that mass protest movements also crucially push for structural, systemic demands that outlast a minister’s resignation or reshuffle. The CJP’s demands, he argues, don’t meet that bar. The Anna Hazare movement comes up as a test case, with Abhinandan Sekhri disputing the claim that it had RSS backing, saying the initial support came from trade unions and communist parties, not the Sangh. A similar dynamic is drawn out through the farmers’ protest, which Joshi argues benefited from ideological and organisational anchoring – support from farm unions gave it both structural backing and a wider anti-corporate framing beyond the farm laws themselves. The conversation also touches on how ideology can double as both an asset (organisational strength) and a constraint (limiting appeal). Anand Vardhan notes that once a movement positions itself in the opposition camp, its stated commitments – secularism, socialism, anti-corruption – tend to overlap with those of every other party making the same pitch, leaving it with a harder question to answer: what, then, is its actual product differentiation? Separately, Abhinandan notes that Newslaundry is lining up a follow-up round table with panellists holding more critical views of Hartosh Singh Bal’s position on the film Satluj. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Shardool Katyayan are joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, Executive Editor of The Caravan, and sports broadcaster Arjun Pandit. The discussion begins with Hartosh’s critique of the film Satluj (previously known as Punjab 95), which he labels as propaganda carrying partial truths. Hartosh, who has reported on Punjab for years, is also the nephew of KPS Gill – the highly controversial officer who helmed the state police at the height of militancy. This was the very force that Jaswant Singh Khalra, the central figure of the film, was investigating, and whose actions ultimately led to Khalra’s killing in custody. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Ashish Anand with production assistance from Sourav. Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hafta, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan and Rinchen Norbu are joined by historian Ramachandra Guha. Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav.Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The alleged theft of donations from the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya has opened a window into the opaque finances of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.  Our Hafta panel discusses the SIT investigation into missing funds from donation boxes, the unanswered questions around the crores collected during the temple construction drive, and the land purchase controversy that implicated trustee Anil Mishra – with no consequences. The panel examines who Champat Rai (the general secretary of the trust) is, why allegations are being made against him, and what Nripendra Misra – former principal secretary at the PMO and chairman of the Temple Construction Committee – characterising the incident as a “dacoity” rather than theft signals about the political dynamics at play. With UP assembly elections months away and resentment running deep in Ayodhya, the panel asks: Is this about stolen money, or a power struggle within the RSS over control of the trust? Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav.Sound by Anil Kumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.