NL Hafta

In this episode of Newslaundry Hafta, host Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Madhu Trehan and Mehraj Lone are joined by Diksha Madhok, Editor and Director of Quartz India. They discuss the recently concluded assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana, the release of National Crime Records Bureau data, the epidemic of protests all across the globe, and other issues. On the missing details of lynching, religious killings in the latest NCRB data, Abhinandan says, “I am not entirely of the view that these have been left out because of malicious intent. I do genuinely believe it’s too subjective.” However, Manisha argues, “I think for the police collating lynching data should be easy.” Apart from the assembly election results, the panel also discusses the local Block Development Council elections in J&K. Mehraj says, “The way they have been represented in the media is misleading because these are indirect elections as people don’t vote, only panchs and sarpanchs vote in them.” They also discuss the exit polls in the run-up to the assembly elections. Madhu argues that the way channels were carrying how their exit poll got the results right, it is “non-journalistic”. “Nobody cares whether you got it right or wrong”, she adds. Speaking on the epidemic of protests that have broken out in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, etc., Madhu says, “No matter what hardships people are going through in India, our people have a spirit that is generally a fighting, joyous spirit.” Abhinandan’s remark, “We, Indians are aggressive” sparks a debate on the panel with Mehraj responding, “Isn’t that a bit of generalization? If you see there are small stories, small acts of kindness everywhere.” On the other hand, Diksha reasons that we are overworked and stressed that probably manifests itself in some of the ways as aggressiveness. Tune in, There’s more.