NL Hafta

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 journalists, a woman, was sexually harassed. “They were taking photographs out in the street, not in somebody’s house, not of anybody,” Hartosh explains. “I have been detained before...Never have I encountered what happened with our reporter...what literally amounts to assault and sexual harassment.”

On Kamala Harris being announced as the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States, the panel discusses reactions from the Hindu Right in India and the US, and Harris’s controversial career as an attorney general. They also talk about the newfound disillusionment in her campaign by the Indian media after discovering that Harris “believes in human rights”.

The conversation also spans the moral and economic implications of Zomato’s “period leave” policy, how TV news channels “jump the gun” to break news, diversity in Indian newsrooms, local and political reactions to the recent violence in Bengaluru, and a lot more.

Tune in!

Song: Woh Kehte Hain Ranjish Ki Baaten - Tahira Syed

Hafta letters: Indian employers and taking leave, secularism, pronouncing words correctly

Timecodes

0:39: Headlines

8:40: Caravan journalists attacked

26:49: 743 Tirupati temple staff tested Covid-19 positive

28:46: Bengaluru violence

47:00: Letters from subscribers

52:43: Kamala Harris nominated as vice president candidate

59:13: Hartosh’s recommendations

1:02:37: Supreme Court’s order on daughters’ equal rights to joint Hindu family property

1:03:58: Letters from subscribers

1:15:20: Rahat Indori’s death

1:17:35: Zomato introduces “period leave”

1:29:08: Pranab Mukherjee’s health and how journalists tweeted fake news

1:34:39: Letters from subscribers

02:00:57: Announcements and recommendations

References

Why I Agree With Bill Maher’s Views On Islam

Secularism gave up language of religion. Ayodhya bhoomi pujan is a result of that

In the post-mortem of secularism, we are hand wringing over religion, missing the real crisis.

Recommendations

Hartosh

Quanta magazine

Under pressure from Sikh clergy, Punjab Police book ten-year-old Dalit girl for sacrilege. 

The Alienation of Adivasis From Our Identity, or How I Unlearned My Hinduisation.

Raman

In the post-mortem of secularism, we are hand wringing over religion, missing the real crisis.

The Rama I sing about comes to life in Tyagaraja’s kirtanas, which beseech you to seek the Rama within. 

Mehraj

That Home in our Heart: An Allegory of a Struggle against Forgetting in Kashmir. 

Manisha

Coping With a Deadly Virus, a Social One, Too

Abhinandan

The Next Global Depression Is Coming and Optimism Won’t Slow It Down