Hello All,
Congratulations to all for putting up an informative and entertaining show replete with diverse views and humour.
Let me go around the table.
Madhu: She adds gravitas to the proceedings. Particularly great when she shares from her wealth of vast experience interacting with world leaders and travelling all over the world. A truly independent voice. Despite her great achievements, she doesn’t take herself seriously. Hope she never ever changes.
Manisha Pande: Nice to hear the voice of hope and idealism that emanates from youth. Hope she never turns cynical. Love it when she does her accent when she is having fun with lines like “I was built for cold weather”.
Abhinandan: The amiable and excellent host of the show. Always nice to listen to his views and his prodigious sense of humour. When he narrated the adventures at the sexologist’s office, I broke into endless titters, everybody around thought I had lost it.
Anand V: The conservative voice of the show. Such a considerable wealth of knowledge as he has lived a thousand lives. I mean this as a compliment, if I ever make an animated film about a wise owl, I will use Vardhanji’s voice.
Anand R: This man will soon win the Nobel Prize. If Christopher Hitchens and Barbara McClintock had a child, it would be Anand. Enjoy his articles, his analysis on the podcast and his Twitter threads.
Raman: Always great to hear him recount his vast experience.
The men behind the scenes Shubham and Anil deserve a pat on the back.
The only time I disagree with you is when you talk about Trump, unanimously dismissive, almost always calling him and his base racist. This is emphatically not true. Would hope for a nuanced analysis in future. He has achieved a great deal thus far.
I WAS also a fan of NL Charcha, but the frequent absence of Anand Vardhan has caused the show to descend into a bunch of boring miserable Leftists whining and complaining about the abominable existence of the BJP and Modi. Last week was the tipping point, the host would slam the BJP and the others would dig deeper in that direction, I thought I had accidentally downloaded a podcast from The Wire. The show desperately needs some independent voices, energy and humour, make Harshvardhan Tripathy a permanent member or have Anand/Madhu/Abhinandan,/Manisha join the show.
Once again thanks for your sterling work on Hafta.
Regards,
Rajan
Listened to your podcasts, one of which was devoted almost entirely to Kathua and Unnao rapes and the other was analysing Sushma Swaraj’s misstep about Indians killed in Iraq and gave up in the middle because the whole experience was exasperating.
I subscribed to NL Hafta hoping that it would be different from the usual bickering, theorising and analysing of the news. Instead I find it to be just a rehashing of various theories bandied about and endlessly argued by a bunch of so-called experts or reporters without providing any solid and verified news.
Listening to your reporters/editors was like a bunch of them sitting around in their drawing room and throwing around all kind of theories and stories with no effort to sort out the truth. My hope was that NL will be different and will present facts and not conflicting theories to propagate confusion and misinformation and serve no purpose whatsoever.
In fact you will be serving the public by raising questions, serious questions about the performance of the authorities and other actors in any story by reporting factual statements or lack thereof. Why do we have to settle for whatever official statements are made without questioning them?
Recently I heard news report from another source about the death of several infants in the Gorakhpur hospital due to lack of oxygen. As to their source, it seems that the local government is not only trying to hush up the matter but is also intimidating the concerned people by threats and arrests to ensure that either they remain silent or agree to toe the official statements. A serious news organisation would investigate the story by locating witnesses with verifiable stories and expose all those who are trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.
I look forward to knowing your views on my comments.
Thanks and regards,
Vijay Modi
Hi Hafta panel,
In episode 167 you spent a solid 2.5 minutes discussing a bandh that none of you appeared to know anything about.
Hafta panelists mentioned that the April 10 bandh was a follow-up to the April 2 bandh (in the wake of the alleged dilution of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 by the Supreme Court).
This doesn’t appear to be true. As per reports in NDTV, ToI and The Indian Express, the April 10 bharat bandh was intended as a protest against caste-based reservations in government jobs and educational institutions.
So was the situation more complex than these news reports suggest? Were you all misinformed? Or was the discussion on Hafta just uninformed gassing?
Best wishes,
Swati
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