Simar Kaur
Have been a NL subscriber for two years, primarily consuming news through NL Hafta. However, recently discovered Reporters Without Orders through the 2024 wrap episode (Ep 352) and would highly recommend it to all the Hafta listeners. If you enjoy the conversation on Hafta, the kind of insight and honest conversation on Reporters without orders would also appeal to you.
Amninder
Hi NL team, I found the Let’s Talk About podcast about Punjab limited in scope and new insights. It is common to reduce the discussion about Punjab to the period of turmoil and ignore the events and phenomena that have transpired since. Why Punjab has fallen behind on the economic front, the exodus of youth to different countries, the deeply entrenched caste system. I feel after covering operation Blue Star and its aftermath in one episode the second should have been dedicated to the following years.
Vishnu
Why does the title right above say 200 words and in the podcast it’s 150? Please fix.
I know NL doesn’t take any ad money but is the monetisation completely off? I have been using Youtube Premiums because ads for a while now mostly watching NL videos and would like to know if NL gets any money from that.
Anyways great work and thank you for another year of reliable journalism.
Abhijit
Hello Abhinandan and team, happy new year.
Your reference to Dinanath Batra – I think it is inappropriate to refer to him as the standard of right-wing scholarship in India. It is people like Ram Swaroop and Sita Ram Goyal who have driven right-wing scholarship in India. There are fringe elements of course, but they aren’t the standard. I think by saying something like this, we fall into the trap that is quite typical in academic circles globally, which usually lean left, that is to discredit right-wing scholarship by only referring to certain elements who are on the fringe.
Also, I thoroughly enjoyed your interview with Shalini Passi. It was amazing and I disagree with people who comment saying how such light interviews are not what Newslaundry is about. I think there is space for us to let our hair down, especially considering the times we live in.
Abhijeet
Happy new year, NL team!
The panel was too pessimistic in their predictions.
In a hundred years, there’s an even chance people will say that 2025 was the high point of the RSS influence and it was all downhill from here. After all, five years ago Modi was unassailable and now the panel was discussing how he's losing ground to the RSS (!). Maybe in a hundred years, the dominant view will be that Modi was so desperate to lose his position of power that he tried to frame Rahul Gandhi.
I would also love to get Anand’s predictions whenever he next joins the panel.
S
Hi Abhinandan, a few months ago you mentioned an LTA on transgender issues that you were putting together with some subscribers. I was wondering what happened to that and if you’ll still be putting that out, because I was looking forward to it.
I appreciate all the work done by NL, thank you!
Venu Parthiban
Re Hafta 518, I’m writing this right after listening to this week’s Hafta. I was pretty annoyed by the discussion on the length of some of the subscriber emails.
By simply brushing aside emails that don’t conform to the word limit, you are insulting the time and effort spent by the subscriber to send the feedback. You don’t have to read the lengthy (or even any) emails word for word. You can at least acknowledge the gist of the feedback/comments and respond to it. I don’t care if you don't read my emails. I’m sure most won’t either. But by saying ‘they won't be read’ or ‘we will stop at the word limit’ is silly and insulting.
I just subscribed for the joint NL TNM subscription for another year. I must say it’s the partnership with TNM that made me continue the subscription.
Vatsal
You need to fix your feedback page’s Google form. It prompts and puts a limit on feedback length at 200 words which is why my letters were around 160-170 words. If you want to strictly keep the limit at 150 words, you need to fix it here or at least mention it in the prompt because when one writes the letter, it is this prompt that comes to mind. Otherwise it is really uncool when I am well under the stated limit of 200 words yet my letters were not read on NL Hafta because they were more than 150 words.
Indu
Listened to yet another depressing Hafta discussion on cow-linked musalmaan murder. How real is Hindu love for GoMaata – I know not. But the need for dairy products is very real in our malnourished society.
It seems almost impossible to sustain dairy consumption without having cattle slaughter-dependent industries.
How many cows are required to meet Indian dairy needs? How many cows do we have in India? What is a cow’s lifetime productivity? What is the cost of maintaining a cow? What is a cow’s lifespan and milking-span? How many Indians are dependent on a cattle-dependent economy (dairy, meat, leather etc)? How much are we contributing to global warming by keeping cows alive? And where are all the male calves?
Hope you could host an animal husbandry expert to discuss the economics of cattle rearing and allied industries.
Sumanth
This isn’t a negative remark!
Even though he was promoting his book, the interview with Jasmine seemed too much like an advertisement for AAP after he claimed he was not a part of the party anymore and was a free bird while highlighting the model is another thing.
Many of the stats he shared are something that I cannot verify personally as I don’t live anywhere close to Punjab or Delhi but if what he says is true and can be verified, it really feels like the light at the end of the tunnel.
Can we have a small segment like India Today’s Good News Today? News in general is a downer, like the air quality campaign and positive news like the schools Jasmine spoke about will brighten one’s day.
I can see some partnerships with cartoonists with TNM and NL and I look forward to more of those too!
Sesha Sai
I loved the promos your team have been doing to educate us on why we need to subscribe. awesome job. very creative work. Thank you for showing behind the scenes in a funny way. You may like to show more of behind the scenes work, to make us understand what it takes to run an org like NL and TNM. Thank you and may you become stronger by the day!
Amrita
Dear Newslaundry Hafta team,
Thanks for all the work, the show has replaced my weekly Bill Maher viewing which disappointed me since the Israel war. I must say your first 2025 show was overly negative.
On history revisionism: at any point in history, hope for humanity was made possible by those dedicated to something that improves us. I think if we were sitting in 1900 India, having this discussion with the empire around us, wondering what future books will say and taking the same pessimistic view, we could have easily come with India is a lost answer. Yet somehow we progressed as a society, through leaders and the will of good people. The story is told by the ideologies that stand the test of time. The only way the changes in history books survive is if those who want a positive world give up. But that is true whether the year is 1900, 1950 or now.
Cheers,
Amrita
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