This week on Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Shardool Katyayan are joined by senior advocate Indira Jaising and independent journalist Saurabh Sharma.
The discussion starts with tax authorities axing The Reporters’ Collective’s non-profit status. Indira says the I-T department’s action against the investigative news outlet is part of a “strategic and calculated crackdown by the government on independent media and journalism”. She says everyone should stand up for the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and ensure it is not eroded.
The panel also talks about the tragic stampede at the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj. Saurabh breaks down all that went wrong leading up to the tragedy. “There was absolute radio silence from the government for nearly 19 hours about how many people died,” he says.
Saurabh adds that he believes the death toll is higher than the official government figure: “I went to the morgue and counted at least 59 bodies.” Raman blames Uttar Pradesh’s VIP culture for the chaos at Kumbh.
Abhinandan and Manisha take note of how legacy media attempted to drown out the news of the stampede. On the government’s PR push, Manisha says, “All you are trying to do is show the good news, but that is not going to get you good global coverage.”
This and a lot more. Tune in!
Hafta letters: Paywall content, crowd at Kumbh, development at Ahmedabad
We have a page for subscribers to send letters to our shows. If you want to write to Hafta, click here.
Check out the Newslaundry store and flaunt your love for independent media.
Download the Newslaundry app. Contribute to our latest NL Sena here.
Song: Vaishnav Jan To Tene Kahiye
Timecodes
00:00:00 - Introductions and announcements
00:03:35 - Headlines
00:13:55 - The Reporters’ Collective loses non-profit status
00:43:16 - Indira’s recommendations
00:44:32 - Kumbh stampede
01:01:38 - Saurabh’s recommendations
01:02:25 - Mismanagement at Kumbh, VIP culture in UP
01:25:43 - Letters
01:43:08 - Recommendations
References
The Hindu Rashtra Project | NL Sena
NL’s ground report from the Mahakumbh
Recommendations
Indira
Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine by Dhirendra Jha
Fraternity : Constitutional Norm and Human Need by Rajmohan Gandhi
Saurabh
Manisha
The Lallantop’s Mahakumbh report
Dainik Bhaskar’s Mahakumbh report
Raman
37 old and new schemes to look out for on Budget day
A much needed thaw | Kanti Bajpai
Shardool
Abhinandan
Sudheendra Kulkarni's review of Arun Shourie's new book
Utpal Kumar's review of Arun Shourie's new book
Deepseek: AI revolution or just hype?
Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters.
Produced and recorded by Priyali Dhingra, Tista Roy Chowdhury, and Anil Kumar. Production assistance by Hanshul Mohan.
This episode is outside of the paywall, just for the week and just for you. Before it goes back behind the paywall, why not subscribe? Get brand-new episodes of all our podcasts every week, while also doing your bit to support independent media. Click here to subscribe.
Manisha: [00:00:00] This is a Newslaundry Podcast. And you're listening to NL Hafta. Angreze apna lagaan aur
Abhinandan: Newslaundry apna Hafta kabhi nahi chhodte. Welcome to another episode of Hafta. We're recording this on the last day of January. Even though the Prime Minister of India is giving the opening of the budget session speech. Yes. So we'll, I don't know what he has said so far, but we shall soon see. Let me introduce to you who all are in our studio.
Joining us is Shardul. Hello. Thank you, Shardul. Once again on the Hafta, a lot of frequency of late, that's nice.
Shardool: Okay.
Abhinandan: Okay. And Raman Kirpal. Welcome Raman Sir. After a two week break. Welcome back. Hello. We've had, uh, lots of Haftas in your absence and Two. Two. Yeah. But there were a lot of emails that we One was, in fact, almost entire emails.
Manisha: Hmm.
Abhinandan: Uh, then we have Manisha Pandey.
Manisha: Hello.
Abhinandan: Who has [00:01:00] had a hectic schedule yesterday covering the Prime Minister's speech in Delhi. No,
Manisha: that was day before yesterday. Okay. Okay. Yesterday was nuisance.
Abhinandan: And
Manisha: another election show with students of Jamia and you. So yeah, hectic week actually.
Raman: When the Prime Minister was touching feets of
Shardool: Yeah.
Why did he do it? I couldn't of, of that female, of the candidate. The shop.
Abhinandan: He's the, uh, uh, he's the candidate from the guy who keeps asking Muslim shopkeepers to shop their shops. That fellow, I'll just tell you his name. Uh, KA ne Negi, correct. Some Negi. Why
Manisha: did do it then I think his name
Abhinandan: and I'm ab and the two guests will be joining us later in the show.
Uh, in the Jesse. Uh, who's a senior advocate and founder of human rights organization, Lawyers Collective. And also joining us will be Saurabh Sharma, who's an independent journalist who is right now at the site of the Kumbh Mela to give us some on ground firsthand accounts of what happened of the terrible tragedy.
And before Manisha gives the headlines, [00:02:00] uh, the NLCN, our Delhi polls. is still open. Uh, I hope you will top it up. We've got a lot of stuff happening. A lot of journalists and producers out there getting you shows, including Manisha having gone to Monday house yesterday. Uh, Srinivasan Jain is also part of the team for the Delhi election and the Hindu Rashtra project, which will hopefully we can undertake.
If enough money has been collected by then, immediately after the election, Basant, Kumar, Pratik, Goel and Anmol Preetam will be exploring the issues of the Hindu Rashtra making, whether it is, uh, state backed organizations that are pushing this narrative and actually carrying out specific changes in schools, colleges, and other organizations, institutions, uh, from across at least four states, if not more.
So the QR codes are there flashing. They'll be flashing from time to time. Do scan those. Contribute to these projects because we don't take any ads and if you will see this week's Newsense, which I highly recommend you do, you will [00:03:00] see how ads firsthand have completely ruined news. I mean you have ads about the Kumbh, but no reporting on the Kumbh.
What could be more disgusting than that? And if we leave news to advertisers and predominantly government advertisers, They will not serve you. So flash this QR code. Pay to keep news free, click on the link below, tell your friends, relatives, etc, etc, and do contributes. With that, uh, Manisha, headlines. So,
Manisha: uh, before that, PM touched BJP candidate Parparganj, his name is Ravinder Singh Negi.
He touched it. He actually didn't. Ravinder Singh Negi was touching his feet. He signaled don't touch it, so he touched it thrice. And he's done
Abhinandan: this before. It's his way of saying don't touch my feet. Don't touch my feet, basically.
Manisha: Okay, so the headlines, very tragic week in Allahabad, Prayagraj, at least 60 were injured after a stampede broke out at the site of Mahakum in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj.
This was the night of the Mauni Amavasya, CM [00:04:00] Yogi Adityanath has ordered a judicial probe and now we know that it's not one site, mostly the media has reported on the Sangam knows where there was stampede, but Lallantop has put out a story which says at least a There's another site where stampede had occurred.
Jhusi. The reporter's collective and investigative news platform on Tuesday stated that the income tax department had cancelled its non profit status. Delhi elections have set off an array of bizarre situations. Arvind Kejriwal's strange claim that Haryana CM is poisoning the Delhi drinking water, after which an FIR was filed against him.
And then ECs asked for evidence. Meanwhile, the Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini attempted to drink water out of the Yamuna. And there was this press conference yesterday with Arvind Kejriwal came with a bunch of bottles Amit Shah, whatever The fact is that Delhi water shit through this problem has been pointed out before during winters because fresh water goes down during winter months.
[00:05:00] The plants can only treat one I think PPM is the, what's the measurement for ammonia? PPM, I think. It's at 7 right now. And while these guys are doing all of this, we're drinking water which has not been treated of ammonia. RO can't treat it. And it's highly toxic. So I just don't find this funny. I'm just very unhappy with how our politics is.
Today again, I think the AQI must be around 400. Yesterday was 400. So yeah, elections have just been disappointing. Anyway, uh, the Congress on Wednesday released its manifesto for Delhi assembly elections, promising to conduct a caste census and create a ministry for Purvanchalis in Delhi. And of course there's cash scheme payment of 2, 500 to women.
All parties have come out with their manifestos now.
Shardool: Just a week before polling.
Manisha: And I don't know why parties have started doing this, but they've come out with like, they do it in episodes. Pehle Guarantees, phir Like nothing comes out together.
Shardool: It's Jerry Springer Show Delhi Politics.
Manisha: The News [00:06:00] Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority has criticized the Ustadzri for making derogatory comments about LGBT community and the Supreme Court, while covering the same sex marriage case, they've ordered them to crop out the remarks from his show.
They've also, so this is the season of NBDSA coming out with Orders, even Rubika Liaquat was censured for her reporting, her, can't call it reporting, her discussions on Arvind Kejriwal's liquor policy case.
Abhinandan: And where she had ascribed guilt to the Ahmadi party, uh, on a matter. But of course, I, I doubt these censures and fines will make any difference to the broadcaster.
In fact, there's
Manisha: one individual, we've done a story on him also, who, you know, good Samaritan that he is. He goes and complains and then gets these orders out of NBDSA, which are often like fines like 20, 000, 50, 000, has no impact on these anchors, but at least there's something, at least some shame we're hoping.
Passenger aircraft collided midair with a United States military helicopter, crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan Washington [00:07:00] National Airport, 67 people are feared dead. The uniform civil code came into effect in Rahan on Monday with Chief Minister Ingham inaugurating a manual of rules for the code, and also launching an online portal for its implementation.
Mata government has decided discontinue funding of eggs and sugar for midday meal scheme in public schools.
Abhinandan: They're good on good that they've done it for sugar, but eggs is. It's terrible. Why eggs? Because it's non vegetarian. No, because some right wing organization had objected. But also
Manisha: the fact is that these guys who've promised so much free cash, where are they going to?
They're going to now squeeze out whatever they can in terms of expenditure. Whatever you can, you're going to see this across states. Dheere cutting hogi. Where, where are the people going to get money for these cash benefits?
Shardool: These people, they did it in MP also, right? Like a couple of years ago, eggs were discontinued in MP also.
Not
Manisha: Karnataka.
Shardool: Karnataka?
Manisha: Karnataka.
Shardool: And the sad part is vegetarian diet doesn't have
Manisha: anything
Shardool: which gives [00:08:00] you B12 or protein that much. Dera
Manisha: Sacha Soda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was released on a month long parole. Again. Out mostly if we do the calculations. He's mostly out. He all the time, maybe for 28 days, he's in jail
Raman: in a year.
He was out for the 12th time. Yes. This was 12th per road
Abhinandan: before every state election. Anyway, every state election
Manisha: donations to the bjb increased by over 87% from 2023 to 2024. Even as the share of electoral bonds and total contributions to the party declined less than half. This is what Election commission's.
Audit shows
Abhinandan: and they outspend the congress. Three times over in the election campaign.
Manisha: India and China on Monday agreed to resume Kailash Mansarovar yatra this summer, restore direct flights and ease visa restrictions after Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong in Beijing.
Padma Awards were announced. 139 individuals got it, including [00:09:00] Sushil Singh, Pankaj Udas, Arjit Singh, and others. Ritambra, the great sadhvi of Ayodhya fame, with Raman sir, I'm sure has a lot to say about her. She's got a Padma Bhushan Awards
Abhinandan: here. And we'll play some of her speeches from the ones that NewsTrack had got back.
When NewsTrack had covered the demolition of the mosque.
Insert: Less
Manisha: than 10 percent of posts in 14 pollution control boards of states and union territories have been filled. The Central Pollution Control Board told this to the National Green [00:10:00] Tribunal. Amazing.
Abhinandan: AQI. campaign that News Laundry started about a month or two months ago. It will be continuing through the year.
We will not let up. We will ask every lawmaker, policymaker at the state level, the central level, five states are responsible for this North Indian pollution. We shall hold each of them responsible and we shall hold each of them accountable. Here's the QR code. Scan it. You can also get involved. You can also help out by filing RTIs, by giving us the AQI in your area.
Now even Bombay celebrities have started calling out because Bombay is touching 300 on a regular basis. Yes. Yeah.
Manisha: So, most channels have stopped talking about it, but yesterday Basant did the AQI. We have a, you know, Aaj Ka AQI series that we're doing. PM 2. 5 was at 5 is, I mean Thailand shuts down, stopped its, you know, shut its schools down.
At 180
Shardool: or something. At 108.
Manisha: Yes.
Shardool: When it crossed 100.
Manisha: We are, I mean, what sort of a nation are we? PM 2. 5 is. [00:11:00] I mean, there's not 10, that's dust. PM 2. 5 is proven cancerous at 300.
Raman: No, I said you really feel it when you go out.
Manisha: For the past two days, morning, when I'm waking up at seven, I can smell it. I can smell it outside.
As soon as you step out, you can smell the smoke. Just smell the smoke.
Shardool: The 50. Our standards are already double. We don't even care about them.
Manisha: Two militants were killed in a gunfight with the Indian army along the LOC in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch region. Why have we not added the most important headline, DeepSeek?
Abhinandan: China is
Manisha: coming out with
Abhinandan: DeepSeek
Manisha: and showing the middle finger to the US. And
Abhinandan: all the
Manisha: remarkable,
Abhinandan: all the AI related chips. Companies that are making those shares just crashed
Manisha: and wiped out and they had had an embargo on giving chips to China. Yes, China's like no need. We'll do our own
Abhinandan: chips. And now we have
Manisha: also in this AI race today.
Uh, IT [00:12:00] minister Ashwini Vaishnavi said that we are putting in how many crores? 10, 000
Raman: crores
Manisha: to develop our own AI.
Raman: But that's an old scheme.
Manisha: Meanwhile, there was much prachar that we are using AI to do lost and found. We have a report by Akanksha that's come out. She's visited missing centers in sector 2 and 3 where these major stampedes occurred.
The announcements are the same old. loudspeaker announcement. What AI they have used, I have no idea. And newspapers must explain who carried this PR that AI has been used in this kumbh to find, find missing people. I think this used to be
Raman: 70s, uh, uh, uh, film formula, where It
Manisha: was, it was,
Raman: it was a formula sometimes in seventies now, which is going to get revived.
Right. Many people have.
Shardool: But one thing about DeepSeek, they have used lesser Nvidia [00:13:00] chips, only about 2000. So it's less power intensive. And India, 10, 000 carat is not going to do it. You have to inculcate research and curious mindset.
Abhinandan: And also apparently the Chinese AI is basically, uh, it refers to data which doesn't have any from the last year or two.
And what Sam Altman says is that AI is only effective if it is going through all the data from. Yesterday. Uh, but they're saying China will catch up with that as well. So it's not like a game changer.
Manisha: And these are
Shardool: all LLMs. And also, this is just, he's saying
Abhinandan: also, he's just doing it to protect his own company.
Who knows? Uh, but, uh, let's first get into the discussion regarding the headline where the reporters collective among other organizations was sent a notice, which took away the tax exemption status. Uh, what does that mean? are the implications for news [00:14:00] organizations. Uh, let's turn to our first guest Indira Jai Singh and we're joined by Indira Jai Singh.
Welcome Indira ji. Thank you so much for making the time.
Indira: Thank you for having me.
Abhinandan: Uh, most of our Listeners will know who you are, but as formality, your introduction is a senior advocate and founder of the human rights organization, Lawyers Collective. Indira ji has previously been a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and is a prominent lawyer.
And I'm sure many of you have, Read her work, seen her, uh, talking about many issues on TV. Uh, Indraji, there is a little bit of, uh, you know, I spoke with, uh, Siddharth, uh, yesterday as well, Varadarajan, uh, regarding what exactly is the notice that has gone to Reporters Collective, among a few others, where it appears they are withdrawing the tax exemption certificate for these news organizations that are registered as [00:15:00] not for profits.
Like. News Laundry is registered as a for profit organization, a private limited company, although even there, I think it's a little unfortunate that GST on us is 18 percent while on print newspapers is 5%, which is far from it being a level playing field. Uh, and if news is imperative for democracy, I don't see why it should be among the top GST bracket, but the wisdom of the government is the wisdom of the government.
But in this case, it is. not revoking the not for profit status. It is only revoking the tax exemption certificate or is it The same thing. Can you just shed some light on this?
Indira: It is revoking a provisional status of exemption.
Abhinandan: Right.
Indira: Uh, from income tax.
Abhinandan: Okay. Now
Indira: this exemption for income tax is obviously given to those organizations who say that they are not for profit.
So, in that sense, there is an overlap in our [00:16:00] understanding of the two concepts. So as you rightly pointed out, NewsRoundly itself is a regular company registered under the Companies Act. But even under the Companies Act, there can be two types of companies, as you well know.
Abhinandan: One
Indira: is a company, private or public, and the other is a not for profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act.
So you have these, uh, varieties of, uh, incorporation, uh, which are basically associations within the meaning of Article 19 of the Constitution of India, which may be either for profit organizations or not for profit organizations. Some are registered as trusts and others are registered as Section 8 companies.
So far as, uh, the Reporters Collective is concerned, they appear to be registered as a trust. Now when you register as a trust, it basically means that whatever [00:17:00] your intake in terms of money, property, etc. will be used for the objects of the trust. In other words, there won't be any beneficiary of the income which comes in except the trust itself and the trust itself has objects which to get the exemption under the income tax that must fall within the meaning of charitable purpose.
So the key to understanding what is going on over here is whether or not the objects of the reporter's collective fall within the meaning of charitable purpose. If they do, and if they do not, make profits. And you see, even charitable organizations are allowed to make profits, but they must spend those profits on charitable purposes.
It's not as if it's a complete ban [00:18:00] on making profit. You do make it, but you have to spend it on charitable purposes. So we are back. We are facing a fundamental issue, namely what is a charitable purpose.
Abhinandan: And charitable purpose is the terminology used in the law. Uh, not, uh, I mean, because the charitable purpose can be, uh, you know, described or interpreted in a different way than, you know, a public service that there are two different things, right?
Indira: Definition is contained, uh, fortunately for us within the Income Tax Act itself. And, uh, and this definition keeps getting amended from time to time, depending on what the government feels is justified or not. But I'll leave that aside for a moment. I'll tell you the definition as it stands today. It includes relief to the poor.
education, yoga, medical relief, preservation of the environment, including watersheds, forests, wildlife, [00:19:00] and the preservation of monuments and places and objects of artistic and historic interest, and the advancement of any other object of general public utility.
Abhinandan: Right, so it's broad. So
Indira: I would ask, yes.
Abhinandan: It's very broad. But I think
Manisha: it's quantifiable. Unlike public interest, which you can't really quantify. The, the,
Indira: not quantifiable, but the objects are known. Now, if you come to something like, uh, the Reporters Collective, they probably applied under the category of education and the advancement of other objects of general public utility.
Yes.
Abhinandan: Right.
Indira: So they would, they would, if that was their purpose and object, they would qualify for a charitable purpose.
Abhinandan: So your tax exemption can be withdrawn, but you still remain registered as a not for profit. Is that correct? Because not all not for profits have tax exemption under ATG.
Indira: You're right.
You have to apply for the, uh, exemption and get a certificate from the income tax commissioner, but maybe you don't [00:20:00] apply and, uh, uh, you then remain a trust. And then you're governed by the trust laws, right? And the trust laws, again, tell you that you must spend your money on the objects of the trust.
Abhinandan: Again,
Indira: if you're a trust, you can't just take away money and spend it on luxuries or, you know, or whatever you want to do with it. Or if you're a company, you can't declare dividends, you can't share the money with the shareholders, etc. So it's basically a question of spending money. For the object and for the charitable purpose for which the trust has been set up,
Abhinandan: right?
And also because I'm also a trustee in a trust we'd set up in 2004, five, uh, the trustees and the people who are, um, on the board cannot take any pecuniary benefit or salary from the trust. They cannot directly take it. I mean, you can have employees of the trust, but the trustees themselves cannot give a salary to themselves.[00:21:00]
Indira: It's not entirely true. That depends on the resolutions passed by the trust, because there are several trustees who work for remuneration, but the work they do is the work of the trust.
Abhinandan: Right. I see.
Indira: They work for the objects of the trust.
Abhinandan: Now, this is a, you know, one in a series of various. Legislations, you know, starting right from the F.
D. I. cap on digital news organizations, which was then there was a clarification after the initial notification and as usual, clarifications, clarifications, the broadcast bill was withdrawn, the I'm reminiscent of the IT Act, which you as well had appealed and successfully got a stay, which have now been struck down by the Bombay High Court, and I'm guessing is in the Supreme Court now.
Indira: It's been, it's been stayed and it's now transferred to the Delhi High Court along a group of, with a group of petitions, which, uh, will be heard in the near future. Yes. But there is, uh. Obviously, uh, [00:22:00] a very, very serious, uh, and, uh, strategic and calculated, uh, I think crackdown by the government on, uh, independent media and journalism.
There's no doubt about it. Uh, see what has happened is a variety of tax laws. I mean, laws have been used. It could be the IT Act. It could, now we can see that income tax laws are being used. All of this is just time for independent media and just time for journalism. Uh, we saw it in the case of Newsclick, uh, you're aware that their accounts were all frozen and remain frozen till this day, um, disabling them from paying their journalists.
So, uh, multiplicity of laws are being used. We've seen the use of UAPA against journalists. I mean, I don't know where to stop because we've even seen murders of investigative journalists. Right. Okay. So
Abhinandan: now you think there is
Indira: a kind of private public, uh, uh, attack [00:23:00] on journalism, independent journalism.
Abhinandan: Now you think in the last, if we take the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, there have been a few cases where the Supreme court or the high court has actually like in Hindi we say on defending.
Um, you know, freedom of speech and the freedom to report whether it was a striking down a 66 a back in 2013 it was or the staying of the amendments to the I. T. Act. Uh, do you think there is enough precedence, uh, case precedence, uh, and legally one is on a sound footing that even as the government continues its attempted assaults on freedom of speech and restricting the press, there is enough for us to defend ourselves using the courts or is there too much gray that we were 66 say and, and this I amendments.
But that may not always be the case.
Indira: So again, uh, Abhinandan, this brings me [00:24:00] back to real, real basics. And that is, why is freedom of speech at all predicted as a fundamental right under the constitution, under 19 1A? One has to totally focus attention on that. And I think that is because freedom of speech is a public good in and of itself.
Uh, it's, it's a part of the right to know. Okay. From the journalist's point of view, the journalist is communicating. But from the reader's point of view, the reader is receiving information and the reader discerns whether to agree with what's written, whether not to agree with what's written, whether to have an independent opinion.
But it's all about Communication, which is part of public good. It's part of democracy. So one cannot let go of that major premise on the anchor of which all other laws have to be judged on the anchor of [00:25:00] which all other discussion has to take place. And I'd like to make that very clear. As you know, we have also founded a digital portal called the leaflet.
Abhinandan: Yes.
Indira: And We are lawyers, but because we wanted legal information to be disseminated in a readable fashion to the general public, because what is, what are the courts all about? The courts are about giving justice to people like you and me, to ordinary people. So you must communicate. That's the whole idea.
But to come back to your question, once you're very clear in your mind that freedom of speech is a public good, then the question comes, you may have a division, that speech, which is revenue generating, for example, you would not have a Times of India applying for exemption, tax exemption, would you? You wouldn't because they're generating profits.
They're not
Abhinandan: doing journalism.[00:26:00]
Indira: What I'm trying to distinguish between is journalism, which is because today we are concerned about not for profit. . So, uh, uh, then there is the, then there is the not-for-profit journalism. There is digital media, there is um, uh, there is, uh, but they all come under the rubric of freedom of speech and expression, right?
So that. Actually answers your question, but so yes, there is a strong level of protection way back in the 1950s The supreme court says freedom of expression includes the freedom of the press Why why is it a guaranteed fundamental right? But uh, i'm I must point out the difference uh between let's say criminal laws and a tax law the Uh, unfortunate part is that when it comes to [00:27:00] tax laws, it's about the revenue which the government gets from any activity and the level of scrutiny which the courts will make.
That was your question. Are we on good ground in court? The level of scrutiny which the courts make of tax laws is much, much lower than what they would do if it was, let's say, uh, even a criminal law. You know, even even if UAPA is used against the journalists, you would have a level of protection. If there's a ban, the courts have struck down bans of channels, uh, on the ground that they violate national security.
Somehow they seem to make a difference when it comes to taxation, because it's a lot to do with revenue. As far as I can see, this government is kind of weaponizing every possible law to curb freedom of speech and expression.
Abhinandan: Yeah. You know, just a couple of things I wanted also just to open this out to the panel a little bit of one is.[00:28:00]
I've been often asked, you know, why did we set up News Laundry as a for profit rather than a not for profit? Uh, and I've given that answer a few times. I'll give it again. But just, uh, let me start with Indrajeet and come to Shardul and Manisha. I'll also have time to think about it because they are more journalists and writers rather than, uh, you know, business people.
Indrajeet, you have registered Leaflet as what and why?
Indira: Uh, well, uh, I, I think I stand in the same category as you, uh, it is a private limited company. Uh, uh, we did not register it as a non profit.
Abhinandan: And any particular reason why you chose one or it was just easier because I, I know one is easier than the other.
Was it that or was it a thought through decision?
Indira: It was, I think, uh, based on our analysis of the way not for profits were being treated. And, um, of course, we were personally subjected to the attack, [00:29:00] uh, on the foreign, uh,
Abhinandan: FCRA, Foreign Contribution Act. But
Indira: it was, it was It was a policy decision, uh, not to take any foreign funding
Abhinandan: and,
Indira: uh, yet be able to survive.
And, uh, it was registered as a company, but the company doesn't make profits. We would be happy if we have, uh, just enough money to be able to survive, to be able to, uh, you see, that's the point of the. You come back again and again to the object of your, uh, setting it up
Abhinandan: and the
Indira: object of setting it up is in public interest
Abhinandan: to
Indira: communicate to the general public the, um, The nuts and bolts of the law, you know, to be able to pass on some form of legal education to the general public.
And of course, our tagline is Constitution First. [00:30:00] So, it is to completely present a legal point of view which is in sync with the preamble to the Constitution of India to ensure that the Constitution of India is not attacked from any different ideological sources.
Abhinandan: Right. Understood. And this is a good cue to say, please go to leaflet.
in, right?
Indira: It is. The leaflet. in. The
Abhinandan: leaflet. in. And you can contribute, uh, cause Indrajeet's, uh, Indrajeet's organization also does, uh, lots when it comes to interpreting and giving you legal news. Uh, which is important and useful for you. So Shalu, let me come to you first. What do you think is a good structure for a news organization?
A not for profit, a trust, a section eight, uh, or a private limited?
Shardool: I have one.
Abhinandan: If you don't have a view, that's fine also. I'm not going to, you must give a view.
Shardool: Look, profit gathering is important, like to, to, to a layman mind, like. I think that anybody who's working needs to [00:31:00] live their lives besides their professional life, right?
For that, you need money. And if you are spending your life doing any job, you need enough remunerations to spend, live your life at ease. You want to be paid well for the services you provide. Now, A news organization, how they should be set up. Like, frankly, there is no definite answer. Like our existence is sort of part of a debate, how a news organization should be set up
besides the government's step, like their acrimony towards like, what's the word I want to use? News in general. Non pliable. Non pliable news is well defined now. When I was thinking about this, Is news a public service or not? Now I started to think a lot of type of news be abhorred. Like a lot of people abhor page three news or news they don't care about.
Or broadcast.
Manisha: Actually a lot of people love page three news.
Shardool: A lot of people abhor it also.
Manisha: And [00:32:00] consumption are two different things. A lot of people. Few abhor it, most consume
Shardool: it. A lot of people hate opinion sections. A lot of people don't like business section with what is this has to do with us. Or even classifieds.
But if you look at it. So from the holistic point of view, how it has come about. And I have a very limited understanding. I want to just clarify this once again, but it does serve a public purpose. Like a lot of page three news tells you what's really going on in parties and who's meeting whom. And business action may not be useful for everyone, but a lot of times it's the economic news which tells you how the policy is being shaped and which most, most people miss.
Which is again, like, I mean, and then complains about it. Like most journalists don't understand business and economics. But the point is the two things. One, this is a service which nobody needs unless you do. And it may be a life changing event for that individual, but it's a daily job [00:33:00] for news people. So it is a public service.
Like the latest example is. Another topic I think we'll discuss today, Kumbh. Like the government was decidedly telling they don't talk to the media. Um, it was telling doctors and hospital administrators, why? And people were trying and complaining that they are not giving us information. They are not even letting us talk to the media.
I mean, our work is not being done. Our sort of hypothetically, our family members are lost and we can't even say this in public. So it becomes a service then. But I wanted to ask something, a question to Ms. Jai Singh. It may be a very stupid question, but nonetheless, is there a well defined definition of what terms like legal definition of public service?
Abhinandan: Is there, Indira ji, is there a legal definition of public service? Is it like defined in black and white or it's open to interpretation?
Indira: You see, I, you see, I read out to you the definition of child care purpose from the Income Tax Act. But [00:34:00] yes, I think, uh, there is a definition in the sense that what is a public service is something that benefits the child.
It's the public. In other words, you don't, and there is a, you don't, you're not the only person benefiting out of it. The public at large is benefiting out of your activity. And to my mind, there's no doubt that journalism is a public service. I don't even know why we are debating it. But I think there's a bit of confusion.
What you need to understand is, it's not that a non profit is not allowed to make profits. They are, but they have to apply those profits to the objects of the trust.
Abhinandan: Right. In fact, let me just explain to the viewers, when one makes profit, one, when. is a private limited company. The profits one makes can be distributed as dividends to the shareholders.
That means that as an incentive for a shareholder to invest in a news company, because if it does well, they will get dividends just like you do in any share that you buy, et cetera, et cetera, as opposed to a trust where you don't give dividends to the trustees or the founders. It is put [00:35:00] back into the trust for to continue the service, whatever it is.
Indira: The law allows. The trust to incur administrative costs, which includes paying the journalists who work for the organization full time. That's a no brainer. Okay. The, the, the trust cannot carry out its objects without employing people. How can they? So that, that, that, that's a given.
Abhinandan: Right. How the money is earned is what is determined by the structure. Like the trust will also pay its employees over the prevalent company. The main difference is how it gets its money, but I'll just come to that since I've been doing that for so long. I think journalism is
Indira: a public And if there is a commercial element to it, commercial element in the sense you, you're taking it away.
But if you're putting it back into the trust and using it for the objects of the trust, obviously it is a not for profit. Sure.
Abhinandan: Right. Uh, Manisha? No, I think,
Manisha: I mean, there's [00:36:00] no doubt that journalism is public good, but charity is something where I think there is a grey. Because when you say education, I think charity has to be a little more tangible than public interest, like an evening school or distribution of books or tuitions, which journalism doesn't do.
I mean, the knowledge that we may put out in the world, I don't think it can be described as charity or education, you know, within charity. So I think that's the gray where, which we have to see in this case, if I, I think whatever you set up as a news organization, if you're going to do news and journalism, just make sure that it's, set up to the T in terms of compliance.
I think journalists have to, journalistic organizations, especially new ones that have come up, even YouTubers now who are, you know, dabbling in information and information both. You have to make sure that you're, I think you need to invest more sometimes in your compliance and your accountants than maybe even your journalists.
Because if you're doing something that The powers that we don't like, you're going to [00:37:00] have to be prepared to answer. And there are enough laws in India to sort of find some or the other loophole.
Abhinandan: Yeah, they'll, they'll get you on a misdemeanor and treat it like a crime.
Manisha: NDTV is a classic case, which was now we know there was nothing to it, but for four years we were told there's money laundering.
Abhinandan: Seven years.
Manisha: And now we a simple corporate misgovernance. At most, you can say it was. Yeah. It was corporate governance issues, not,
Abhinandan: yeah, it wasn't an issue of, of this, but, um, you know, on the bit of compliance, uh, that is a very important aspect I think of whatever is set up. One thing is it's a trust is very difficult to wind up.
Uh, private limited companies also not easy to wind up, but easier than a trust. A trust is near impossible to wind up. You can just change the trustees, but closing a trust is a nightmare. Uh, section 25 company or section eight companies, what it's called now is easier, but energy, you know, tell me if you, uh, what do you think of this thesis?
You [00:38:00] know, when it comes to structuring an organization, and this is something that I, I learned having worked in the not for profit sector for a long time, uh, you know, in RTI, Manish Arvind and I had set up that NGO PCRF in 2004 5 when we used to work on RTI. AAP was nowhere on the horizon back then. And we worked for a long time, you know, that To get RTI amendments, and of course, there were many things that one wanted to do, and one could say one achieved a little bit, but, uh, and I'm not going into the merits or demerits of the party.
One learning that I had was that if you want to change the game, you have to enter the game in the structure of the game, which means if you want to change governance, if the impact you can do by entering politics, is not, there is no scalability not for profits. You know, in a, if RSS remained RSS without a BJP, [00:39:00] they could not have the impact that the BJP has had.
If, you know, Arvind's NGO remained in the NGO, I mean, I worked on it for 11 years. I mean, in 11 years, he went from eight people to 12 people. It's not like it became 1 million people, but a political party can shake up the political system, whether it's freebie culture, whether it's Bijli Free Karo Ye Karo, the impact you can have.
Similarly, I think in news, because it is a for profit operation the world over. And I think For good reason, the more stakeholders, the better. And the more people who think that, okay, news is important. I invest in it. I'll get something back. It it's like education. Education is a public service. It can be state run and it can be privately run.
I'd get run by trusts. And I think all three work, they have their merits, but everyone wants to change something fundamentally. One has to change the way it's done. through the way it's done, which is business. Uh, that is why I personally think, uh, and again, that's not to say that NGOs have no place. I think NGOs are very important.
It's like the ideologue as opposed to the arm that is the operations and the [00:40:00] operations arm is always more scalable than the ideological arm. The ideologue will remain the ideologue, but the operations arm may make some compromises here and there, but it'll scale up. It can change the game. Unlike an ideologue who can't change the game, who sticks to dogma.
Uh, which is why I think if one really wants to change news, one has to do it by demolishing the revenue model, which is the advertising model and saying, let's just demolish this model. So all these big, you know, the times group and then get a group and Z group, which have completely thrown journalism on the bus for profit.
You just dismantle that model and then a new model can emerge. But I don't think that can be done if you work as an NGO. I'd just like to know your thoughts on it. And of course, Manisha's charity, charity. See, I would prefer to
Indira: put it far more generally to say that regardless of NGO, whether you're a for profit or not for profit, uh, there is no escape for engagement with the system.[00:41:00]
So, I mean, coming as I do from the position of a professional, I'm not coming from the position of an entrepreneur or of a for profit or not for profit. I have no escape except to engage with the judiciary.
Abhinandan: Right.
Indira: If I want to change the judiciary, if I want to have any impact on what's going on in the legal system as a professional, of course, my engagement comes in different ways.
One is directly arguing cases in court, but that's a different issue. I think we need to have many, many more forums in which we can engage with the, uh, with the judiciary outside the framework of the courtroom.
Abhinandan: Okay.
Indira: So I don't understand why the judiciary doesn't engage with us in forums of this kind, you know, where you come, where you debate, where you talk, where you raise the issues you want to raise with the community as a whole.
I don't mean in, you know, exclusive little conclaves where nobody even bothers to ask you a difficult question to answer. So I think [00:42:00] somewhere we are losing the thrust of this argument or the heart of the argument. And the heart of the argument is, are we engaged as citizens? As, as. As people who are Uh, working day in and day out of our lives in whichever field we may be to uphold a democratic system in which we, we were born, we were inherited this system.
Do we want to keep our democracy afloat or are we ready to accept a totalitarian authoritarian government? I'm certainly not. And I would say that I would use every forum available to me, uh, to use it. And I personally see what is happening with the Reporters Collective as a sign of the times, not a sign of the times to come, but a sign of the times as we See, we live in, and I see that every law has been weaponized in order to, uh, to crush freedom of speech and expression.
And you, whether you are a for profit or non profit, I think it is the duty of all [00:43:00] of us to pull together and to make sure that the fundamental right to speech is not in any way eroded, whether it is for profits or for non profits. Right. But before I say, I am looking at it.
Abhinandan: You have to be in court at 11.
30 but just want to belabor the point that Indira Jaising as a lawyer has a bigger impact than she would if she only ran an NGO advising us how to deal with the law. And that is I think one has to enter the game to make a bigger impact. But before you go, a recommendation that you think could enrich the lives of our listeners and viewers.
Indira: So I can only tell you what I'm reading at the moment. I'm reading, uh, Dhiren Raja's book on Golwalkar. And I'm also reading a very fascinating and interesting book by Rajmohan Gandhi on the issue of fraternity. I think it's one of the few books on the subject, which, uh, which is very modern, which is very, uh, timely.
And, uh, you know, I love reading books, which, uh, uh, uh, uh, cross cutting, [00:44:00] like they would be good for lawyers. They would also be good for non lawyers. So these are the, these are the two books I'm reading right now.
Abhinandan: Thank you so much. Coincidentally, I'm reading, uh, Arun Shourie's book on Savarkar and I interviewed him yesterday and I asked him about Savarkar and Gulwalkar's relationship.
And he was like, you know, Gulwalkar kept Savarkar on the side. Hamper, you know, just indulge him, but not, didn't allow him to get too involved. Uh, but interesting. But thank you so much. And Raji, uh, good luck to leaflet. I'd like to urge our listeners, viewers, once again to check out the leaflet in and contribute so that Raj's team can also do a lot more.
Uh, and they're fantastic team who do some fantastic work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Now we joined by next guest, RABs. Shema. Uh, welcome Rab. Thank you. Make the time. I know you're between, uh, Al and LA now. And you've made 20 minutes for us. Very grateful.
Saurabh: Thank you, Abhinandan.
Abhinandan: Uh, for our audience, Saurabh is an independent journalist.
[00:45:00] He currently works with Reuters. He has worked with Al Jazeera and 101 Reporters, an organization he's also the co founder of. There are links to some of his reports in the show notes. Uh, and before we get into the discussions on the Kumbh and the tragedy that happened there, uh, we just want to remind you all that, uh, we are not ad funded.
And we have been extremely critical this week on nuisance on all the Kumbh ads. And I would like to start off the disgusting irony as I was driving to work and this I was listening to FM like I normally do. And FM, every channel you turn to, there is some Kumbh ad playing. This is not an ad. It's a it's a song.
I don't know how much they pay for the slot. Here's what it sounds like.[00:46:00]
So this was playing today on the FM channel, less than 48 hours after a terrible tragedy. Um, without irony, uh, it was playing on more than one channel, Iris isn't playing. Day before yesterday, 10 hours after the tragedy occurred, uh, India Today had a story, a full package in the afternoon on the celebrities who took the dip there, uh, the sexy siren turned sannyasin Manpa Kulkarni, who has been given some of the, by the Kinder Akhada, [00:47:00] they had about a three minute package.
I was aghast while watching this. And all these channels are playing Kumbh ads. Now, I have seen videos, uh, of people from the Kumbh saying, when we go there, they say, go back, go back. But the ads that are playing here are saying, come here, come here. So where does that leave people, is my one question. Other than that, because Saurabh has been on location, Saurabh, just tell us what you saw there, what we know so far, and how much more you think is there in the story that has not yet been touched.
Saurabh: Um, so what I can tell is based on my observation being on the ground is that it was not just one stampede, not two, there were multiple stampede, but the casualty, the major casualty occurred at the Sangam nose where like, so I'll tell you the count of the crowd counting which we are getting from the government.
So between 10pm on 28th of January to 6am [00:48:00] on 29th of January, there was an influx of about 5. 74 crore people.
Shardool: Okay.
Saurabh: And official sources of mine have had been telling me that over 60 percent of them wanted to go and take dip on the Sangam nose only. And is a critical juncture because see, just beside the Sangam nose, like the Sahi Snans.
Were about to help. At that time, it was, um, the statements said it were, it had to be started at 4:00 AM So the first occurred, couldn't came, couldn't come because the stamped occurred at around, um, 12:45 AM
Abhinandan: Okay.
Saurabh: Or between 12:45 AM to 1:00 AM So the, uh, Stan was suspended. So what happened was like. So this entire set of people like 60 percent take us like say, I'll take a safe number, let's say 50 percent of the people from 5.
7 crore, they were [00:49:00] all coming to the Sangam nose, the roads are barricaded, it was just a 50 meters wide stretch on which they were traveling. And there were a lot of people who are already sleeping on the ground waiting for the 4am Brahma Murat. To start their snans, so when the crowd started coming, the crowd started pushing them from behind and from the front because in the front also it was barricaded because the shahi snans were about to be held.
So the push came from both back and the front. And people who were sleeping, they got trampled, they got crushed beneath them.
Abhinandan: And
Saurabh: people were actually begging the police to open the barricades, to let them go. They suffocated, they died.
Abhinandan: Now the police will open the
Saurabh: barricades. Officially declared by the government is 30, injured are 90.
I personally counted, I was inside the morgue, I counted 59 dead bodies.
Abhinandan: [00:50:00] Right. So, uh, about getting information there, I know that, uh, at least back in 2001 when I'd gone for the Kumbh, there was a media tent, um, where, I mean, I didn't go as a media professional then, I just went as a tourist, but apparently you could get information, et cetera, et cetera.
I have seen that this tragedy occurred on the night at night between 1245 and one by the next evening at five, the local police and administration had still said there are no casualties. This is when BBC had already reported 15 death. That's at least no media organization was willing to report any deaths.
I'm talking about legacy media organizations, not, not the
Manisha: Although Dainik Bhaskar, we must say, came out with a number. Their reporter, uh, was also inside the morgue. She counted, I think, 20 bodies. One of the bodies had number 40 written on it. [00:51:00] Sourabh of course was there and Reuters put that out, your report with site 40.
Abhinandan: But the, uh, you know, the live blog, the live update quoted the administration as saying no casualties. So what was the information, official information there? Who was the source? How people getting it? Or was there none?
Saurabh: Abhinandan, I got the information about this stampede at sharp at 2. 32 am. And I started, I immediately started calling the Mail Adhikari Vijay Kiranan and SSP Rajesh Divedi, DIG Vaibhav Krishna and all the top officials.
None of them answered. They all saw my messages. There was a blue tick mark on WhatsApp. They knew me personally. They were telling me, Itna crowd aa gaya. These number of people have came here. People are surging. The crowd is surging. When I asked about the tragedy, was somebody injured? Was there some tragedy?
But none of them replied. After [00:52:00] 19 hours, we received a message in the state, in one of the group, which is governed by the state media. And they said, the press note is coming in a while. Then they held a press conference for just like two or three minutes, where they said 30 injured. But before that, I had already counted my colleagues.
Uh, other reporters from other organizations. They were already outside the mall. Somebody was counting 39, 38, 20, like we all had different sources, but yeah, the debt toll was way higher than what the government said. And regarding sources like. See, um, somebody told me that there has been a, uh, uh, an oral order from the government to not to talk to reporters, not tell anything.
So we were all on our own, finding hospitals, finding mortuaries. Finding dispensaries, finding doctors to talk to [00:53:00] people who got injured, who got, uh, who went missing, and who got killed. There was absolute radio silence from the government for 19 hours.
Manisha: And just imagine that right before that, you guys were probably getting hourly updates on the headcount.
Number of people who've
Saurabh: arrived, because I was seeing
Manisha: TV
Saurabh: flashbacks. Every 30 minutes, Manisha. Just, I was surprised, like, they had the AI system in place. They were having their own formulas to count the crowd, but they didn't have any system in place to count the number of dead bodies, count the number of injured.
People, like, last night at around 10. I made a video from outside the Swaroop Rani Nehru Hospital and there was a list pasted of missing people and people were still coming and they were not finding their own like, um, loved ones.
Abhinandan: So I have two or three questions because I know you have to leave because you're making your way back from the [00:54:00] Kumbh to Lucknow.
Uh, Swaroop, one is. A, I've seen some videos that there are these VIP uh, you know, ways towards the com, which are like acres big, lots of space. And there is no problem there. You know, some reporters get access to those areas. So there is clearly a big chunk of land for VIPs, which has no problem. A, on the ground, is that true?
Uh, too, too many bridges. Have been separate for VIPs and all the janta is cramped into some 50 meters space to go in. Uh, is that true? Thirdly, uh, no vehicles that are to come or go. Uh, so many people are posting on social media that we are stuck. In fact, one lady had posted that unless you can walk 20 kilometers, don't come here.
Uh, these three questions that I have one more and I'll let the others also chip in, but yeah.
Saurabh: I'll start answering one by one in case I [00:55:00] forget. Yeah. So regarding your questions about the VIP movements, yes. VIP movement is a huge problem for public. There are guards, like R rail guards where the V VIPs come.
Great call was there. The wife of, uh, UPS present, DGP was there. They were taking stands. They were taking the holy tips. So for them, the movement was no problem. Second, regarding canto bridges, which actually caused a problem. There are more than 30 bridges, I think 32 or 36, only six were open. In that night on the intervening night.
So just imagine a crowd of over five crore and only six bridges open. There was a huge chance. And I had already mentioned in my report that, um, Police didn't expect this number of crowd. They said there was a rise of at least four folds in the crowd. And, uh, last question. Yes. That
Abhinandan: people cannot get out and come in.
Saurabh: If you have to [00:56:00] walk 20 kilometers, that is very much so. I mean, just imagine, I live in Lucknow. And to go to Allahabad, I had to take a flight.
Abhinandan: My God. Okay,
Saurabh: because like in half a mile, which is about 28 kilometers from Allahabad. The entire traffic was stopped.
Abhinandan: Yeah,
Saurabh: a lot of coming out also today, today in the morning, like, while I'm returning, so I had to come for like, 13 kilometers.
And for that, it took me about one and a half hour. Then I reached my camp, then I started returning. So, yeah, whatever you ask, everything is true. You
Manisha: know, and the thing is also that we are getting a lot of clips now, especially viral on social media. In fact, one very tragic, you know, a young girl, she died.
She's from Karnataka and she's speaking, uh, you know, she's sort of talking to the camera and saying that don't come here. It's very scary. There's too much crowd and she didn't survive the stampede. But this thing that, there's another point to this that when you're [00:57:00] walking 15 kilometers, 13 kilometers, on average people were walking that much.
Once you reach the spot of Ghat, you're then gonna lie down there and rest. I think that also then you, you're not going to have that, you know, like when you have a temple or a fair in a temple, you have those quick darshans, right? Like five minutes in, five minutes out, you have that bandobasth of getting in, getting out.
Here you have this large mass of area, the ghats. Once people come in, I think it was also taking time for people to move out of there because simply because you walk 50 kilometers. People are saying there's no bandobasth of water.
Saurabh: I'll stop you. Technically, like, um, whatever it's being said, it's a 12 kilometer long stretch of river. And the critical juncture is only the Sangam knows.
Abhinandan: Yeah.
Saurabh: But the problem is the closure of Pantone bridges. Because there is enough space for people to lie down to take rest and many of the guards are still vacant.
Like, when you enter Allahabad from the platform outside, when you go from the north. You'll, you'll, you'll find the [00:58:00] guards, they're empty, like in the Kizhganj area near the Allahabad degree college, the guards, like people are not going there, but, and see, it's also, um, uh, the problem of the belief that it's Sangam me hi amrit kiratha, the drop of the nectar fell only in the Sangam area, so people believe that it's
Abhinandan: But that is inevitable, right? Because it is, because if you just want to take a dip in the Ganges, you can go to Bhagirathi and take a dip here, you know, when the state also said that officially they announced that don't come here and some of the Holi Akhadas also said that we will also take the dip Not that the Sangam knows we will take it up 10 kilometers in solidarity with people.
Don't everybody come here. Fine. I mean, fair enough. It is very noble thought, but the whole idea of Sangam is Sangam. No. So it's technically
Saurabh: the argument that has come from the government is like, it's not that particular spot. It's not that Sangam knows, but the entire [00:59:00] stretch of Ganga, that's Sangam.
Abhinandan: Yeah, so that that is semantic.
So, and my last question is that while all these ads are running on television without irony on radio without irony, uh, that come to the comb and see how wonderfully Yogi G has done it. And of course, all the ads end with Yogi G and Modi G very proudly looking into camera. There is the local administration discouraging people and saying, go back.
Saurabh: Uh, see when this stampede occurred like hours ago, people, like, policemen were scared, so It's, it's, I'm repeating it like, because it's mentioned in my copy. So when the first alert of crowd search came to the police headquarters, like the integrated control and command center, it was around 11:00 PM and uh, by 1130 all the policemen from the integrated control room were out because they knew something.
Uh, the crowd would go out of hand, the situation would go out of hand, and they started announcing, don't come to the , go [01:00:00] elsewhere. Go go on the different guards. Just get away from here because you, you can get crushed. So there are videos on social media where you can see like DM, EDM, policemen trying to convince people to move, uh, move away from the Sangam Nose.
So at that particular point of time and even after that till like, um, 10 in the morning, Uh, the male authorities requested all thedo to take bath elsewhere in the entire stretch and not, um, like go on the area.
Manisha: But then there seems to have been, like you said, there was stampedes. At least we know that one in juicy that has come.
And there were other spots of standing. There was
Saurabh: one, um, at the GT Road, but no official confirmation. Then there was a fire Insect 22, which again created a kiosk. I was there like yesterday at around five in the evening I [01:01:00] had to pull out. So there had been multiple incidents, which are not coming to the light.
Even after this, uh, about the second stampede, we got to know, um, like 10 to 12 hours later. Right. And, uh, one thing Abhinandan, I, I want to thank all the photojournalists who were present on the spot, because had there been no photojournalists present at that site. We would have never got that news. Yeah, they would have just dug this up.
Abhinandan: Wow.
Saurabh: I seriously want to thank Adnan Abidi, Ritesh Mishra, Ashutosh, Sumit Kumar. These four people, like they were, they were the first people to alert us.
Abhinandan: so much Saurabh for making the time breaking journey and joining us on Hafta. Please hope you get to Lucknow. Uh, safe and sound and thank you for your work, uh, and appreciate it. But before we go, uh, can you give us a recommendation that could enrich the lives of our listeners, a news [01:02:00] report, a documentary, a book, anything that you think is worth our listeners and viewers time?
Saurabh: Well, I don't know. Just go watch Diplomat on Netflix. Season two is like amazing one. Okay. Regarding book, I'll say just wait for my one to get released.
Abhinandan: Oh really? What is that about?
Saurabh: It's about the Silkyara tunnel incident. I see. When is it out? Station for 21 straight days. So I documented some of it. I submitted my first draft.
I'm waiting for like for the first study to come.
Abhinandan: All right. Great setup. All right, man.
Manisha: Thank you. Thank you.
Abhinandan: Right. Let me just go around the panel. Ramansah, you've had a long career in journalism and I know your subject was crime.
Raman: Corruption also.
Abhinandan: But tell me, uh, typically what is the system of getting information on, you know, huge events like this, where the government is the primary organizer?
Anything. So all the information if you want, like at a macro level, has to come through them. , [01:03:00] what are the system put in place normally and how credible is the information? You know, historically, how has it been as opposed to, you know, we could talk about how it was in the company.
Raman: Before, uh, okay, there, uh, I'll tell you something which, uh, uh, you know, used to happen in the nineties when there was no technology, there was no cell phones, then there used to be basically the PR department of, uh, the, uh, which I
Abhinandan: was the relevant ministry.
Raman: relevant ministry and even the CMO. Okay. Chief Minister office. They also do it. And also there is, uh, at the center also, a team is, uh, you know, coordinating, uh, when, when, uh, you have a thing like Mahakam. So, so you have a central team also, I mean, the PR team, again, the information officers. So they are the ones who are coordinating among themselves.
They draw, they draw a strategy. They draw a strategy that how they need to give the [01:04:00] information. Now the credit, uh, when you come to, I mean, as on today, see the credibility, if you look at the announcements that have been made before the Mahakam was like this time we are going to set a record.
Abhinandan: It was all about records.
It is
Raman: all, all for the optics, obsession
Abhinandan: of records, including Ayodhya, all kinds
Raman: of announcements that they had made, uh, you know, for the optics and someone who has worked in UP. For a couple of years or three years, uh, I was in Lucknow. So this city, this state is known for the VIP culture. Okay. I think 40 percent of the stories that.
I got done, you know, in, in UP, were about the VIP culture, for example, uh, Mukhtar Ansari, he has a, he has a fleet of cars, all the same, all the same number 786 or, uh, more, uh, Raja, [01:05:00] Raja Bhaiya, who has got another fleet of car, which have no numbers at all. So, so that shows the, it's a city of Bhokalis.
Abhinandan: Yes.
Raman: Okay.
Abhinandan: So gangster,
Raman: all, all, all these people. So, so VIP culture is very, very predominant, uh, in Uttar Pradesh. So I am not surprised when, uh, say, uh, chief minister, along with this cabinet ministers want to take a dip at imagine dip at Sangam, uh, nose, then how the entire VIP, uh, must have, you know, happened.
In the middle of that. In the middle. And
Manisha: before the tragedy, you had Amit Shah visiting. Yes. You had Ramdev visiting. Yes. You had a series of, uh, Now, when the Home Minister is visiting, what sort of bandobas they'd have to do? Obviously, they'd have to close down everything. The police has probably overworked because they would be on some 20 18 hour duties ki Home Minister aa raha hai.[01:06:00]
So, I also feel like it's very convenient now to say the police is not doing its job. How are they supposed to be doing their job? See,
Raman: I tell you, if there are, there are three, uh, three big fields or four big fields, they, they will keep at least two, minimum two, maybe three for the VIPs and one for the common
Abhinandan: people.
Raman: That's the, that's the nomenclature, you know, for any program that happens in UP because I have seen that. And, and, uh, here also, I mean, again, this is quite evident like today in the print media. All top stories are about the VIP, uh, know that all status has been canceled, canceled all VIP passes, been canceled, passes have been
Abhinandan: canceled, but again, but, but too late media cabin we have to see on the ground and see exactly what's happening and, uh, look out for, we've already got one report from our correspondent on the ground, Kumar there tumor coming up, uh, which are not funded by.[01:07:00]
kumbh ads which are not funded by ads with a smiling yogi ji or a modiji or any other ji which are funded by you and there's a qr code flashing right now and many of you must be sick of me saying this but unless one says it no one really wants to contribute because unless you support journalism it will be ads of sarkars who will be supporting journalism and then there'll be no journalism happening so i cannot reinforce this enough that please tell your friends family others contribute for journalism otherwise The quote unquote journalism done by legacy media on the Kumbh tragedy is a disgraceful patch in the history of Indian journalism.
Manisha: I mean, Sourav has given us a good, uh, understanding of what went wrong. By now, from what we've seen through clips, VIP access was a huge problem for most people. Most people were complaining, ki hai, humare liye koi bandobas nahi hai. Bridges being blocked. But I think [01:08:00] it's good to just zoom out a little bit and See, Kumbh is no stranger to tragedy.
You have had the first post independence Kumbh when Nehru was, you know, present, I think a day before when the tragedy had happened. The same day, it was Mauni Amavasya again, surge of crowds back then, official estimates said about 800 people, but Time magazine back then had said 230 people had died.
Nehru was rogered in the parliament. He was questioned. There was a judicial probe. There was then this understanding and statements. Statements made that, you know, netas should not visit KUM, VIPs should not visit KUM because there seems to be a chaos when VIPs visit because the police is too busy managing the VIP bandobast rather than managing the crowd.
The last KUM 2013, I think, under Samajwadi Party's government, there were 46 people who died or 36 people who died at the Allahabad railway station. Again, the same day as Mauni Amavasya. This has been, and like we said in the beginning of the hafta, that kumbh mein [01:09:00] bichhde hue, you know, it's a, it's a trope that we know we've grown up on, but this is the first kumbh where the government says that all previous governments have done a disservice to kumbh.
Modi personally attacks Nehru and says in ke time hazaar log mare the. Yogi says Azam Khan was, you know, in charge of kumbh. Tab to stampede hui thi. Ab wale kumme, it's going to be the most pristine, beautiful kum. For three months in the lead up to kum, there has been a constant You know, effort by the state government to invite people to come, come and visit the Kumbh this time is going to be like nothing before.
We will set a record. So people put faith in your advertisements and the questions have to be asked directly of the Yogi government. Not now, it's very convenient to say Mela Adhikari, IAS officers, police. I don't think the police can manage a crowd of, you know, 5 crore people. Given the sort of police, you know, we have overworked, underpaid, 5 crore people coming in, what are they supposed to be doing?
In fact, Akanksha has done a report that on the next day, [01:10:00] very next day also, you had tickets where the police were sitting atop, monitoring the crowd, but they possibly cannot, there's no, on ground, you can't see any infrastructure for the police to even Crowd control. And this is a Kumbh where 7, 000 crore have been spent, at least what we know from newspapers.
So, you know, I'm, I, tragedies at Kumbh may not be news because we, like I said, we've known this forever. It's happened forever. But certainly what was very new about this Kumbh is the PR push, the aggressive invitation, the aggressive sort of Tom Tomming and saying that we are doing something that no one has ever done again.
Come. People put faith in that and as a result you have a surge of people come, this time it's going to be excellent and people die. And I think questions have to be asked directly of the Yogi government that what, where is that 7, 000 crore infrastructure on ground when you don't have crowd, basic crowd control infrastructure.
Abhinandan: So press conference like, uh, uh, today's the 31st, the tragedy occurred on the night [01:11:00] of the 29th. Right. Night is the 28th. 29th morning is when the Prime Minister was making that speech here, the election speech, where he was going out how horrible is Congress, how horrible is AAP, how horrible is Rahul Kejriwal.
Every single channel cut live to his speech. No one was telling us what was happening at the Kumbh. And in the morning before this, you know, Sri Narendra Modi's speech being cut to live uninterrupted like they do with All the breaking news was not about Kumbh. Modi questions Kejriwal. Modi does this, Modi does that.
Just before that, because of course, they don't have the guts to interrupt his speech. The speech, there'll be no ad breaks. Before the speech and after the speech, there were Kumbh ads. But no journal about the Kumbh. I mean, it is a disgrace. I mean, these journalists and editors should really, they don't need the Kumbh, they need a Chullu Har Pani to read around themselves, man.
It is, how vile, what are you training a young journalist there, man?
Raman: And [01:12:00] it wasn't just wiping out the Stories about com in on some channels. I saw that they were basically telling that how well they managed. How well they have managed it. There is a hospital nearby. People were taken to the hospital.
Abhinandan: Also, they tried to drown out the noise by making a big deal of something else.
For example, there was a Congress MP who was arrested. For rape, because one woman accused him that he promised to marry her and didn't marry her and in pretext of that raped her. Now, sure it's newsworthy. It is, I mean, it's a coincidence or what that all four channels think this is the most important news but not about.
And this is when the numbers of the Kumbh deaths had started coming about. The attempts to drown out the Kumbh news was so blatant. It is, I really, I would like at some point, maybe 10 years from now to make a documentary film, all the people who were in those newsrooms, what the hell were those [01:13:00] editors talking about?
What were they saying? Whose calls were they taking? Whose instructions were they dancing to? But while
Manisha: we criticize these guys, I must point out that ABP News, BBC, Denik Bhaskar, Reuters, And now today, Lala and Top, I think these organizations have done a very good job. ABP News reporter was on ground as it was unfolding and you could see, you know, bodies being carried in a stretcher.
BBC reporters were also there, very carefully telling us that something has gone wrong and showing us bodies. So by that time, and I think they were doing this by 2. 33, the reporters were there from 1 a. m. onwards till 3 at least I saw. So these guys actually did a very good job. 33 in
Abhinandan: the morning, right?
Not the afternoon next morning, the same day, the
Manisha: same day morning, they were there in the wee hours of the morning. And but I think one more just to add a quick thing on crowd control. I think at some point you I don't know who we're trying to make this world record. At some point, you have to have some sense that a place which can maximum [01:14:00] accommodate two lakh people that's Sangam nose area, you can't have five crore people and start capping it off, create a base camp and cap off.
And this is true for all religious tourism, whether it's Kedarnath, every year we wait for some tragedy to happen there, you know, Vaishnodevi, there was a stampede, there are these. you know, religious sites where people really want to go. But you have to start capping it off. That X number of people we can handle.
And these are the number of people who will be allowed to enter. And then once the rush goes, you
Abhinandan: have the next
Manisha: lot coming. You create a base camp. It's idiotic to do this. And I Just want to emphasize how bad I feel for the police. I know, like, we love to hate on UP police and all that. But dude, they are, I mean, they're overworked.
I was seeing the visuals just of those mass of people at Sangam. My God, I, we don't know if the police, by the way, lost any men in this stampede or not. But. It is inhuman to expect them to control that crowd with nothing with what with a baton in their hand they'll control.
Abhinandan: No also I think if if one [01:15:00] goes by what one's including what Saurabh said that the amount of land allocated along the ghats or along the bridges to VIPs as opposed to regular folk.
That
Raman: is for sure.
Abhinandan: That ratio being you know three is to one. If you open it, you can actually accommodate four times the number of people. So, you know, that is one thing that one can easily do because if, if one unit is accommodating X and three units are covered for VIPs, open all four for regular people, you've just quadrupled your capacity.
Manisha: Telling video from one influencer had put out or the same night as Moni Amavasya, where she's on a VIP Ghat and she's doing this whole thing, ki log keh rahe hain bahut bheed hain, dekhin kitna sundar hain, bilkul khaali hain doodh doodh tak. Main hain asnaan karungi, main hain. Everyone's hating on her now, but poor woman, she's just.
She's got access to
Abhinandan: something. She's got access
Manisha: and she's saying it's amazing and it's empty. It's
Raman: empty. TV, uh, when I was working for the TV news, I mean, we were told, uh, because you have [01:16:00] lesser number of people, the story making takes a lot of time. So, uh, whenever. Uh, there is, uh, any event where you have lots, a lot of crowd.
So we were told that cameras should be put up there 24 hours, 24 seven. You just need to show that. So imagine if this kind of training, which has been given. Uh, to the TV news, they completely blacked out
Abhinandan: Mahakom,
Raman: especially when the incident happened. Before that they were active
Abhinandan: and
Raman: showing all kinds of cultural things.
And now suddenly they are active
Abhinandan: trying to say that this is normal. And as Gaurav Sawant said, Sanatan Dharam bounces back from any tragedy. So you know. I mean, the UP
Manisha: government themselves are showering petals when it hasn't even been 24 hours, you know, of deaths. I mean, that's also shameless. Yeah. Did you have to really shower petals in a helicopter on people and there's been death?
Shardool: I have a lot to say to say about this. One, because one, this is one thing I can claim authority on like religious [01:17:00] strings. So one, everything has become PR. Like while I was listening to Saurabh and like what Raman Sarbha said. And if this is just. Personalized PR. Earlier, it used to be a PR for Kumbh, now it's personalized PR.
For Mr. Modi. It's as
Manisha: if they've invented Kumbh. Yes.
Shardool: And the other thing is, because it's personalized PR, so of course, politicians and everybody would want to use it for themselves. Which like, how the hell in Mahakumbh? Influencer are getting VIP passes. Who the hell are these influencers? Like, in context of
Abhinandan: Mahakumbh,
Shardool: why are, why is Milind Soman and his wife are getting passes for Mahakumbh?
And where are, where are those like those, you know, very, very obscure Naga Babas which used to get PR in these things. Now it's just Mamata Kulkarni and couple of others.
Manisha: And you're right. There are a lot of influencers and obviously they've been invited to showcase the grandeur of it. Of course.
Shardool: How the hell would they get?
Can they get past any Akhada? No, they can't. They don't even know how to talk to them. [01:18:00] So other thing, and like, I'm I don't know about Raman sir and Maneesha, but I'm sure you would have anybody who has organized a gathering of 2000 people and more understands you need to create stakeholders for every responsibility, the magnitude of Kumbh, no country's administration can ever handle it.
They just like every time you see pictures which have been taken by satellite, which are visible from like stratosphere and above, right? The border of space, you need active stakeholders on the ground. Even if you put on all the government machinery, it will not be enough. You just
Abhinandan: don't have the manpower.
Yeah.
Shardool: And every time like I have organized the gatherings for like the RSS stuff, you create specific parts and VIP movement has to be minimal. And it has to be the least disturbing one. Yeah. VIPs understand that they cannot You know, come at the P car, you know, just
Manisha: do it in the first two days, do it only for the VIPs.
You get done with your bath and you [01:19:00] create a lane
Shardool: and you hide it. You don't sort of flaunt it. And the other thing is like, we keep listening to these things because, um, I think seven months ago in somewhere in up, there was another stampede where 120 people, 21 people had died. It was on us. Yes. Hot resume.
We have to, and some of this is an off point, create VIP, separate VIP security and policing. This has to be done. Like it's in many, many countries, security, the skill set is different and the jobs are different. It's hard. If police keeps indulging in sort of protecting the VIPs, then who will police, which is what Manisha was pointing out and like Siddharth was pointing out.
There are limited number of people. How are we going to do this? The last point is these theerths and these occasions used to be great equalizers.
Abhinandan: Now it's the opposite. It's a flex. You can show how important you are depending on what pass you can get for which guard.
Shardool: Yeah. The old [01:20:00] times you used to see, like, although Nehru ji went there and politicians have started this, but the stories of Kumbh are.
You know, far and beyond. There are a lot of them. Even Maharaja used to, you know, I don't know if they did it or not, but the point was, at least the point of the stories was you, you, you sort of remove your riffraff, your materialistic wealth, and you humble yourself. Now you don't humble yourself till you are in the water.
Abhinandan: No, also there, it's a flex. It's the opposite of humbling yourself. But I'd just like to point out one thing, especially this whole competitive, uh, cleanliness of which river is cleaner than the other with Mr. Nayab Singh Sen, the Chief Minister of Haryana. I mean, dude, if you're doing that, don't pretend to drink it and spit it out.
It's worse than Obama taking that sip from Flint water. It is, I mean, what a disaster. And
Manisha: why would he do it? We know it's polluted. Yeah, exactly.
Abhinandan: Now, everybody knows. Um. Uh, you go to Oja, which is [01:21:00] also one of the earth comms is held. The river there is not a perennial river anymore, and you don't have to, you know, go to any
I have gone there more than twice. That river is only a river during monsoon. During waters time, it is this little pond. It is not a flowing river. Uh, it is so filthy. It is sad. El I have shot there at least six to seven times. I haven't been in the last five years, but I refuse to believe that they have cleaned it up in the last five years.
Shardool: No chance.
Abhinandan: It is filthy. It is just the volume of that river is so enormous that a lot of it gets washed off. But some of those guards, in fact, when we were shooting once, my two anchors, I said, get into the water. There was a huge fight. They said, you come in. You come into the water. I said, yes, for the shot.
And after that, Rocky went and bathed for one hour. He said, I am not going to do any other shots after this. I will take this dhubki. And I will go because there was phlegm, there was excreta, there was all sorts [01:22:00] of stuff lying around. Uh, the third location, Ujjain, Orchha, the river is dead. There is no river in Orchha.
It used to be a full river. It is such a beautiful place. The filth there is unreal. Um, Puri, Jagannath temple. Yes. During the, I have shot the chariot there twice. I can't even tell you how dirty it is. So whoever says that our area is clean, yours is dirty, it's the same all over. So you have to hold your administrators and your chief ministers and your environment minister responsible because by themselves they will say his ghat is dirtier than my ghat.
So be on my side. And I've seen people fighting with each other. Over, no, it's that chief minister's fault, our chief minister's greater. I mean, the river in Kanpur, go there.
Shardool: Oh, yes.
Manisha: But you know one thing, I just, I felt really bad to see all these. I mean, [01:23:00] in a week where China's making news for deep seek, the news on BBC, CNN is crowd crushed, deadly crowd crushed.
Which from independence time, this has been making you, I really feel bad for us as a country and some well wisher of the government has to tell you had 7, 000 crore at your disposal. You have a central government, a state government. You're a government committed to the Hindutva cause at least for your own cause.
Stop thinking that buying the media is the way out for everything. This could have been a great time for great press coverage across the world. Provided you put in the work.
Abhinandan: Yes.
Manisha: I mean, why? I think. And from a lot of reporters who went there, in fact, in the first 15 days, they were like, we were every day getting bombarded on our WhatsApp groups and look, we're using AI to find missing, lost and found.
Waha pe ho kya raha tha? Wohi Sonu ki mummy, Sweety gate number 3 pe khadhi aao, mil lejiye, woh wait kariye. Yes. That is what was happening. Akanksha's report also that we put out, the missing, you know, [01:24:00] centers have just loudspeaker announcements. And even there, they're saying we're announcing ourselves because no one's helping us.
Shardool: Yeah, yeah.
Manisha: So you are again. All you're trying to do is plant news, buy good press, and that's not gonna get you good global coverage. And honestly, as a well wisher, somebody within the government has to tell them that, dude, this is not George Soros. This is your mistake.
Abhinandan: But I don't think you could have
Manisha: like,
Abhinandan: but I don't think they want favorable global coverage.
They just want to win an election. And to win the election, you just have to convince the Tucha anchors and the Tucha reporters who are, you know, doing vava. That is it. You are basically just. Throwing bread to feed the little fish along the banks of the river. You are not looking to be a part of some big global mainstream, but so it is not like that is their agenda anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. So, uh,
Manisha: it feels, no, I mean the whole tirade against foreign media, but I'm like, foreign media will, if you have a crowd crust and they will cover the crowd crush.
Shardool: I wouldn't, this is one thing, Manisha, what you're saying [01:25:00] sounds easy. But like, this is a documented thing. One of the most rarest and difficult thing is to self reflect and be honest with yourself.
People spend their lives lying to themselves and they will deny it. They will do everything to deny what they are. And some of them go to Kumbh to find that centralization. And the
Manisha: thing in India is that, yes. When 9 crore people finally took a dip on that day, how many people, whatever, 5, 9 crore. 45 dead is just a very small number.
No chance. We will move on. We will go on. It was just a little tragedy. That's what the edit said.
Abhinandan: 45, we still don't know the number. We still don't know the number, exactly. We still don't know the number, but If you go by some, it is way more than that. Most
Manisha: focus will be that look, so many people, in fact, there's already a lot of, you know, coverage coming out.
That look, so many people are conveniently taking a bath. So, okay, there's been some tragedy on the sidelines. That's our tradition, I guess.
Abhinandan: So, uh, we will wind up with the appeal to subscribe and pay to keep news free. I can't say that often enough. We will read the emails, your feedback, your criticism, your suggestions are [01:26:00] welcome.
You can mail us at podcasts at newsletter. com I repeat podcasts at newsletter. com or just click on the link in the show notes below it will open up this little form. Please keep your word count to less than 150 words. We had someone who found a loophole by sending an actual letter. And just because of how creative that method is, I shall, I shall read that out.
Uh, but keep it below 150 words. We only entertain the feedback of subscribers. If you're a non subscriber, like a young Osama has written, I've seen your letter, but sorry, only subscribers letters are entertained.
Manisha: Very cruel.
Abhinandan: So, uh, Manisha can give us the letters, but let me start off by this one, which is so clever.
Peri Sai Teja from Bengaluru. So Peri Sai Teja has sent a three page physical letter. You can't
Raman: count the words.
Abhinandan: He says, To the much revered Manisha Ma'am, I am writing this letter in solidarity with the subscriber who goes by the self anointed [01:27:00] title Commander Shepard. Many rules in this country, who's also on the spectrum, right?
Commander Shepard. Yes,
Shardool: I remember him.
Abhinandan: He's written again this week. Yes. Uh, many rules in this country start with good intentions, but kumbhakt janta, uh, twists them in creative ways. In this same age old tradition, since the 150 word limit was applied to emails, I'm writing this letter the old way.
Loophole. See, this is autistic people. But how much pleasure
Manisha: But how much pleasure do Indians get out of doing this? This is such an Indian thing.
So
Abhinandan: on election shows, in my view, this kind of Ground reporting neither lends to great insights into public's views of a government nor potential voting patterns, as has been illustrated. Discussion and stories on policies based on data, I guess retrospectively is what you mean, is more effective. Okay?
There is no point in live streaming election results, as will be revealed. [01:28:00]
Manisha: And
Abhinandan: it's useless and it's not a sports match. We need live coverage. Done.
Manisha: No live coverage this time.
Abhinandan: On pollution campaign. I thank the News Laundry team for Uh, great campaign and the reporting being done. This is something that you think more effort should be going into rather than election.
Okay. On podcasts, more than hafta. I'm a great fan of reporters or orders. Basant is excellent. Please give him a raise. Okay. Please get five more people to subscribe. And my request, please do a deep dive analysis on the recent policies of direct cash transfers to certain sections of population. Okay. And education, health, et cetera.
Then Forex. Uh, I see bus tickets for women is versus efficient and financially viable public transport system. Yeah. Uh, would it take another 1991 like fiscal crisis to change course? You're saying these freebies will bankrupt us.
Manisha: In fact, today the Indian Express has said the AAP government has spent more on [01:29:00] subsidies than on infrastructure.
Abhinandan: Yeah.
Raman: Which
Manisha: I think shows in Delhi.
Raman: No, they have spent 16 percent uh, on the, on subsidies. Uh, in fact, 40 percent of the revenue expenditure, uh, of which 16 percent is, uh, subsidies and, uh, this CapEx, uh, on, uh, infra, it was reducing, I think they peaked only once, uh, where they spent 25%.
Abhinandan: And, uh, among other things that, uh, Perry has written, uh, he says my book recommendation whole number and half truths by Rukmani S.
And, uh, finally, uh, he says, identify myself as he, him, he was. I think it's probably me or someone assumed he was a woman in the last email. So thank you for finding the loophole. Just want to clarify the one 50 word limit now applies from here on to physical letters as well, but thank you for your support.
Thank you for suggestions [01:30:00]
Shardool: or any other means you can find.
Abhinandan: Yes. Any
Manisha: way of communicating with any words read by us.
Abhinandan: Any words that have to be below 150.
Manisha: Yeah. Okay. So Naveen says time sensitive letter, great work. Keep upping the game. I want to know there's so much hype on, on electoral bonds and Hindenburg report.
Why is no one talking about it? Follow up and its consequences. I understand the rest of the media. I want to know why News Laundry is not following it. It's huge. Now it's nowhere. I have a request, your ex colleague Meghnad is trying. is trying in Delhi elections as an MLA. Can you interview him? So he's going to be part of our election show.
We shot it yesterday, so that'll be out soon.
Abhinandan: Uh, regarding the electoral bond, uh, well, there will be followups, but again, it has to be newsworthy in the news cycle. Ujwal
Manisha: says following your coverage on Delhi election, and as you guys are talking and taking interviews of all those useless Ghalibas type candidates.
For a change, please interview Meghnath. He's there. He's there. [01:31:00] That's already done. That's already done. Uh, Krishna says I'm a subscriber since 2021 and usually do not consume any news or long form articles. A Haftan Newsom says Abhinandan has said that this 10, 000 Abhinandan has said why we should subscribe 10, 000 times.
So he's not going to say it on his behalf. Just writing to say thanks for bringing Vivek. He gives a nuanced explanation on a nuanced situation and keep going says explain a video program one episode per week, which does not restrict itself to a topic, but just the most complex story of the week. Once I cut the clutter, but better feasible.
No, not right now.
Abhinandan: But yeah, later it's feasible in the long run. But yeah, this is something that I've been, you know, thinking of talking to various people to do it. But let's see.
Manisha: Raghu says this is regarding, uh, inviting Sanjay Baru did not expect a man who has always sat on the fence and lives in a euphoric world of his own.
On this show. It's very personal, yeah. How do you know he sits on a, he's in a euphoric world of his own. Maybe he's not. Okay, anyway. Says, explanation of how the power balance has [01:32:00] shifted in favor of OBC Dalits shows a deep disconnect with the situation on ground. Just a few reservations here and there, some tokenism in form of Dalit welfare, etc.
Does not show groundbreaking change. Mr. Bharu should hire a taxi, do a discovery of India by taking a tour of villages, towns and see the plights of Dalits. He even sat on the fence when asked if he was proud of the film.
Abhinandan: Based on the book, avoid such slippery people.
Manisha: But I feel like his point was about OBC politics, which you have to admit, the BJP has really, you know, been at the forefront of changing that.
Yeah. They spent 20 years it in politics. D in politics, no. Maybe that is gonna take more time, but OBCs, yes, they are the most important electoral. Puzzle for every party now. Advaith says, Hi, love your show and the work your organization does. I was wondering if you could add subtitles whenever a panelist speaks in Hindi Urdu.
No.
Abhinandan: Well, Advaith, uh, all this is
Manisha: very time consuming, time intensive. Manisha is clearly
Abhinandan: in a mood to give very, [01:33:00] even I sound polite today. Uh, it will just delay the hafta even more. One of the reasons we've started recording it on Friday to release on Saturday was because when we used to record on Thursday, The production process was a little more complex.
It would get dated. So if we start adding subtitles, of course we can activate the auto subtitles feature that's there. Yeah, but it gives very, uh, sometimes very wrong subtitles. We
Manisha: record this on Friday. It's a two hour long program. It goes up on Saturday. It's intense. So. You know, it's a bit of a resource.
Yeah,
Abhinandan: if we have more resources, it's possible, but not to the current resources.
Manisha: Anonymous says, can you please explain the rationale behind putting in so many resources on Delhi elections, especially for non Delhi subscribers, regardless of the result, the BJP will be in power anyway, and wants to thank us for the free to breathe campaign.
Abhinandan: Uh, Anonymous. At least I am not so pessimistic that BJP will be in power anyway, so why cover the election?
Manisha: So many resources because we are also in Delhi. I mean, it's a city. It's, yeah,
Abhinandan: it's like basically what put Dhaniya's team and [01:34:00] Newsminute at power, if not better than legacy media years ago was The Chennai flood, when it happened, their team covered it better.
Was it the Chennai flood? Bangalore didn't get a flood, right? It was Chennai 8 years ago.
Raman: Chennai. They
Abhinandan: completely owned that story. In fact, Legacy Media is also calling them for information. So, if your headquarter is in a city, or you have enough resources, at least that city's best reportage should come from you.
That is why we put so many resources behind it.
Manisha: Shamshabro says that he and his partner have contributed at least 60 to 70 percent to NL Senna projects and he'd written it last time to ask us the logic of why we're putting in so much money in the Delhi election project. So he said he'd explained the amount of content being released for Delhi elections a lot.
However, if it's being produced by the same staff, then why does the cost increase? Do you hire freelancers when tasks go beyond personal capacity? I will move to a Game Changers subscription once my current [01:35:00] subscription runs.
Abhinandan: Yay! Hey, first of all Som, can I just call you Som? He's saying, I saw what you did there.
I called him Som Sudro as opposed to Som Bro, Som Subro. I actually didn't do it on purpose. I just realized Som Sudro means, Som improved. It wasn't intentional. I just realized, just to give you an idea, yesterday Manisha and Atul shot at Mandi house with a bunch of students. So there are three cameras involved.
So yes, we do, you know, engage freelancers because our editing capacity is limited, our production capacity is limited. So when there's so many things happening simultaneously, also not to mention when these guys go out, there are vehicles that are hired. Um, so yes, whenever you cover an election, even although we do like Srinivasan Jain is a part of this one, we always hire a few people in front of camera, some behind camera.
So that's where the, uh, spend and the capacity goes up. And finally, we have a, uh, I don't know, SOM, and I will call you SOM, [01:36:00] in case I do the SOM Sidhu again. After the, uh, end of every election in the project, you know, a few weeks later, we have a, uh, session, which is like a, for the people who contribute to that project, uh, Zoom session.
So that you can speak with the editors and the people who are part of that project, just for accountability to, for you guys can say what was covered. And also you get some behind the scenes stories. So you can be part of that and you can ask Manisha, Atul, Srinivasan, they'll all be part of that. Here's a QR code.
If you want to be part of that conversation, you want to get a zoom link to that chat, uh, do scan this QR code, contribute to our election coverage.
Manisha: Vatsal says the politics around not releasing Diljit Joshan's movie Punjab 95 is somewhat curious. I mean, there's AAP government at the state level and BGP at center.
If anything, this movie exposes the mishandling and extrajudicial killings during the Congress era for human rights, from human rights violations to extrajudicial killings and the appointment of controversial erstwhile DGP of Punjab could [01:37:00] provide enough political ammunition for cornering the Indian GOP.
That, anyways, criticized for mishandling Punjab insurgency in 1980s. GOP, Grand Old Party, just in case people are confused. Therefore, I don't understand why this movie is being stopped, especially when we have had uncut releases of politically garbage movies like XYZ Files. I'm not following this, uh, I haven't followed this controversy.
But I think it's been released. I think it was released
Abhinandan: overseas, right? They wanted too many cuts here, so they released overseas. But just today's Delhi Times, if you see the front page, I There is this very glowing report of the Delhi Files 2020 by Vivek Agnihotri, the legendary maker of Kashmir Files.
Manisha: This is the Sikh riots in Delhi.
Abhinandan: No, I think Delhi Files is 2020, what happened in 2020. Oh,
Manisha: okay, okay. Delhi Files 2020. And there is, I
Abhinandan: think there's some, Delhi Riots 2020, the Bengal connection or some shit like that. Oh,
Manisha: God.
Abhinandan: And, uh, The Times Group, which has this wonderful Delhi Times and the Times, and of course, they're so famous [01:38:00] for their journalism.
It is a report worth reading. I mean, how can you blame the trash that is Vivek Agnihotri and his like, when
Manisha: Okay, so next letter is by Manan Shah. Hi, team. So, in one of your projects, you're coming to Gujarat. I would like to offer help, support. Okay, we'll tell Basant. He's going to be there.
Raman: He's living on 12th.
Manisha: I'm a resident of Ahmedabad. I have two rooms in my house where I can accommodate you and I can drive you around in my car. I'm happy to. I have a request. When your team is here, do one more story on the displacement of lakhs of people to develop Ahmedabad. People are impressed by infrastructure of riverfront, road, but what everyone misses is lakhs of people who got displaced.
None of them were given proper homes. Think of this as a small scale model of what Dharavi Mumbai is going through. BJP and Adani have done it in Ahmedabad and it's now going to be replicated.
Abhinandan: Thank you so much, Manan. We will get in touch with you. Fantastic. This is what is wonderful about Newsology Subscribers.
We have an Excel sheet of What we call friends of NL. One of you subscribers also gave your vehicle to [01:39:00] Manisha and Meghnad when they were in
Manisha: Kolkata. West Bengal, we drove it all around the whole state from north.
Abhinandan: Some of you gave access to your offices and homes for Wi Fi connections when they had to upload stories and send them.
This is how we get a community together. Yeah. To have a community funded news operation.
Manisha: As Srinath says, latest election results in the U. S. have reiterated the importance of an informed voting public. It's unfortunate that so much of the public gets their news from social media platforms. What's even worse is that reputed news outlets peddle drama, entertainment, conflict, and biased stories in the name of news coverage.
That makes platforms like yours even more critical to the survival of healthy democracies. In that context, I came across a news item on NewsGuard in my local paper. The Washington Post, it provides reliability ratings for various news sources and predictably has become a target of right wing partisans who benefit the most from this misinformation campaigns.
I'm wondering whether you folks are familiar with NewsGuard and if you've considered providing a similar service offering. Sounds like something that you could, [01:40:00] could be right up your alley. I don't know of NewsGuard. I'll check it out. Comrade Shepard again says, what's up my G's and dogs.
Shardool: Oh
Manisha: God. Dwogs.
Is this Gen Z enough? I'm not a boomer. I'm just an autistic who learned human interactions through boomer books. Gen Zs are in their are in their early to mid twenties. My jeez. God, it's very difficult to read what you're writing. Do you think a person who grew up reading Camus, Dune, World War History, and Manga, and comic books, etc.
with heavy dosage of internet in teenage years would turn out normal? Manga.
Shardool: Manga.
Manisha: If I would have written this email in my school days, y'all would have given me the Anglo Saxon, Saxon phone.
Abhinandan: What is manga? Manga,
Shardool: Japanese comics. Japanese anime comics.
Manisha: Anime
Shardool: comics. I see. I
Manisha: have read Camelot, but I haven't read anything else.
I have read Dune, World War History. Manga, comics? Hmm. Okay. Okay, Manan Shah. [01:41:00] I just saw the interview of Atishi and kudos. It's the perfect interview and a very refreshing change from all the mainstream media. B. S. We see a nuisance. Also, one question. How do you decide what things go behind the paywall, what stay out?
I feel we should always have hafta. Every single episode. For free, not behind paywall. It would help get subscribers and with your organization's vision, you should consider your social responsibility to keep Hafta open for all citizens. I know this capitalist economy doesn't allow such decisions easily, but I think the quality of your work is so great that such a move might make even financial sense for you.
If all of you watching free Hafta become game changers and we can ensure that if a hundred K people are watching 20 percent subscribed, then yes. It would make financial sense
Abhinandan: or the But
Manisha: every week they have to do it.
Abhinandan: Yeah, they have to do, but it does, I mean, I'll just tell you, when we pull hafta behind the paywall, the amount of subscribers who get pulled in.
Yeah, we keep it free. People don't
Manisha: free yoga. Uh,
Abhinandan: I dunno. We'll see. We'll take a call with this one is free. [01:42:00] Okay. This one is free What? Free yoga. But yeah's a lot of free, but here's a QR code you can contribute 99 rupees also. 'cause many of you, you know, say that. Okay, 500 is too much. Let's see how many if you contribute 99 rupees the QR code will stay on for a while and you know whoever's
Manisha: watching right now just scan it and pay 99 rupees.
Yeah. Then who knows, maybe we'd see some reason in keeping it free for long. Shivam Tyagi says, all right, people, here's a question. How are these Mahakumar numbers calculated? For fuck's sake, I've been trying to find the methodology for so long. I finally decided to write to you. I'm not sure about trad media reports claiming 80 crore visitors.
My bet is it's not over 45 crore. Even that's too far fetched, requiring full capacity at all times. Could you do a piece on this?
Abhinandan: Yeah, this is in fact, I've made a note of it. It's AI. We should do. Yeah, we don't know how they. It's
Raman: not just AI. I mean, you, when the government says that 300 trains are going to Allahabad, I mean, full of people.
So this is how I do it. There are
Manisha: some ways in which they are. [01:43:00] Estimating. But yeah, the updates were coming pretty frequently, like Saurabh was saying. Early updates on the number of people coming in. So actually keeping a headcount is not that hard. What is hard is not knowing how many people have died, you know, for at least 19 hours you're unaware.
Abhinandan: Right. Uh, on that note, uh, let's get the recommendation of the week before we wind up today's hafta. Uh, you want to go first, Shardul?
Shardool: Yup. So, I have two recommendations and both are entertainment. Nothing is newsy. One is a stand up comedian I like. I like Gianmarco Suresi. I think I've recommended him earlier on Charcha, but I really like his comedy, his style.
And the other one is But you're recommending
Manisha: him where? On YouTube?
Shardool: Yes, you can find him on YouTube. Like, wherever you can consume his show. And the other one is, in my opinion, one of the two. Um, if not the best, one of the top three movies of last year, [01:44:00] and it's directed by Robert Eggers. I think he's one of the best filmmakers of our times.
So Nosferatu, that
Abhinandan: what's it about?
Shardool: You don't know Nosferatu? Oh, it's about
Abhinandan: the devil. It's a horror or something. It's a horror.
Shardool: So what, what Nosferatu original was made in forties and it was a complete rip off. Oh, I've seen it. This is the one with the Dracula. Okay. I've seen it. So, but they were sued. I think Stroker family sued them and court ordered them to burn the film, all of them, but some copies survived and it's been remade now many times.
So that movie tells you that good cinematography and you know, you, if you do justice with the material, even the old and simple stories are awesome when it, when they are translated to screen. So it came last year. I think it released on Christmas day. But beautiful movie.
Abhinandan: Fun. Manisha?
Manisha: So my recommendation is, uh, Kumbh related.
I think the Lallan Top video on the second [01:45:00] stampede is a harrowing watch, but it should be watched. It's by Abhinav Pandey. While we critique the media, it's also important to give a thumbs up when things, you know, reporters, either reporters or networks put in that ABP News deserves some viewership. They have some good primetime shows.
Uh, then in fact, I followed them pretty keenly over the last two days. Uh, their primetime, there's a anchor who's done a pretty good job of reporting on the Kumbh. So her shows and, uh, Reuters and then Bhaskar. So I think if you were looking for Kumbh reportage, tune into these. channels and networks and individual reporters who've done a good job.
Raman: We have budget tomorrow. So there is a data point in Hindu, uh, very small column, the old and the new schemes to look out for on budget day. Uh, this really sums up if you, I mean, no need to [01:46:00] read, uh, you know, long articles. They have given four tables and all the schemes that have come over the years. 10, 15 years and the money allocated, for example, uh, your, your smart city.
Now it has, it is running dry now, whatever money they were supposed to allocate, they haven't allocated. So, so you will know the health of all these schemes, uh, you know, that the government has introduced. So beautiful data point. Then, uh, I have, uh, one more, uh, this was in Indian Express, uh, a much needed door.
Uh, this is by Kanthi Bajpai, uh, very interesting take, uh, you know, he is saying that how India and China last week can, can, you know, together, you know, they can, uh, Um, not challenge. I mean, they, they can really, uh, [01:47:00] counter us dominance, uh, you know, in the, uh, in the world in, in terms of economics. So I think it's a very interesting thing.
China doesn't need
Manisha: us to counter US. I think we need China, more than China needing us.
Raman: So that is what they're saying because India had just gone to, Indian officials had gone to China. So they had done that. And the third is old, uh, Comedy show, uh, Schitt's Creek. I don't know if you guys have seen that.
I've just started watching it and it's hilarious. It's really good. Yes. On Netflix.
Abhinandan: Right. Uh, so I have a one recommendation. I was this week also on South Central. So I've put some recommendations there as well. You should check out South Central. Uh, one is Arun Shourie's book that I read, uh, because I had to interview him, which I interviewed him earlier this week.
We put out the interview after Delhi election is over.
Manisha: No, let's put it out [01:48:00] after the counting is over because there's then Okay, we have After 5th.
Abhinandan: Okay, after 5th we'll put that out. Um, it's, it's a heavy read, but it is a, it's a fascinating read because of the kind of sources that Arun Shourie has tapped into.
Uh, So you can check out the interview. You can also read the Review that Karni has put in the express and also the review in the first post and read both side by side. It's, it's just interesting how news is just so partisan today that, that the same book can have such different, uh, takes.
Manisha: Who's written?
The one on first post?
Abhinandan: Um, it is so
Manisha: Isani team. So you see him. So
Abhinandan: this the one by. He was advisor, right? Vajpayee. Utpal Kumar has written it. So, which he's said that the book is as much about Savarkar's [01:49:00] contradictions as about Arun Shourie's own. But, but, uh, but I, but I, I mean, I will say one thing about Arun Shourie and even in the interview, I asked him about his book on Dr.
Ambedkar, which I thought was uncharitable. And I didn't agree with lots of what he said. He's. He's so thorough, even if you disagree with him, that, and he'll sit there and take your question, which is a lot more than what can be said about some of the right wing intellectuals, one of whom, who used to sit here, had also banned up, producer, don't send me the letters of criticism that come, I don't want to read them.
And that's the level of fear of critique that there exists. And my second recommendation, which I think is very relevant in, uh, you know, the times we're in is the global story has done a, I think it's a 25 minute, uh, podcast on deep sea air evolution, or just hype. It kind of breaks it down for you, what it means.
So these are my two recommendations. Uh, I leave you with [01:50:00] yet another appeal to subscribe and pay to keep ministry. Because if there's one thing this week taught us is. That many news networks have no compunctions about taking ads for an event, earning money from it, and then refusing to report on that event in public interest.
It is so transparent, so disgusting, I have no words. But, there is always hope. As long as there is life, there is hope. And that's what I urge you To cling on to, and that is what the song will also communicate. Have a great weekend. Thank you, Shardul. Thank you, Raman. Manisha. Thank you. our wonderful sound recordist, Anil, and our producer, Priyali.
And Teesta is also here, producing, I'm guessing. Thank you all.
Song: [01:51:00] Transcription
by CastingWords
Manisha: Thank you for your subscription. You're changing the world by changing the way news is funded. For the smoothest News Laundry experience, download the News Laundry app. It is the best way to listen to our paywall podcasts. And you'll also get access to all free News Laundry shows. Keep us ad free and subscriber funded.
Help us [01:52:00] grow. Tell people who listen to you to pay to keep news free. Subscribe to News Laundry. Keep journalism independent.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
