Dear panel,

Huge fan and subscriber.

I have a question for the panel regarding the conduct of certain politicians, such as Anurag Thakur, Piyush Goyal, Jagdeep Dhankar, Om Birla, Kapil Mishra, Kangana, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tejaswi Surya. The people who do not care about their own image to save Modi. Do they have everyday interactions with colleagues? Why don’t other parliamentarians address these issues directly? Are there informal conversations about their public image and behaviour? Do they receive honest feedback from friends or family about their performance? Don’t their friends and family tell them that they are not doing their job? That they have become less likeable each time they take a stand?

Abhinav 

***

Hello, I read the Quillette article recommended by Manisha in last week’s Hafta, hoping it would provide some clarity on the whole Imane Khelif issue, but it ended up creating more confusion in my mind. If higher testosterone levels can provide a competitive advantage to athletes, then shouldn’t a test for T-levels be done as a norm to ensure a level playing field in female sports? As per the article, it seems that the IOC has acknowledged that the said boxer had high T-levels, and this information was scrubbed from their website. I agree that there is an inherent bias against athletes of colour; the nonsensical tweets and smear campaign against Imane was not right. But shouldn’t the IOC’s responsibility be to run the most prestigious sporting competition in the world in a fair manner? How can political correctness be more important than scientific proof?

Rajashree

***

Dear team, I absolutely love Charcha and Hafta. I’m new to the subscription and have been bingeing on both the podcasts, especially on my drives through Bangalore traffic. Thank you so much for the great POVs.

I had a suggestion (I use the NL app on IoS) - it would be great if you could add the link to the YouTube private videos on the app for the podcasts. I prefer using YouTube vs listening to it through the NL app podcast (enjoy looking at everyone). I don’t know how to access the video podcast.

Thank you so much and lots of love to the entire team of both Hafta and Charcha!

 Pavan 

***

Hi NL team, I really enjoyed the very informative and enriching discussion around the Olympics and Vinesh Phogat’s case. Her disqualification still feels like a gut wrenching blow, and my respect for that woman only keeps on increasing the more I read about her struggles over the last 1.5 years or so. She is an incredible athlete and one hell of a human.

PS: I too noticed that the colours of your recording studio follow the Nazi colour schema :P  

Vatsal 

***

The rain in the last few days brought everything to a standstill in different parts of the country. Personally, even though I’ve lived in the Delhi NCR region for the last six years, the level of flooding compared to the rains is just unfathomable right now. It's a clear case of misplaced priorities where proper drainage and maintenance are not on top of the agenda, and that's what leads to this.

Living has become a struggle in India; we give close to 50 percent of our income to the government and don’t even get free air and free water for that. Wait a couple of months, and the AQI numbers will be the flavour of the month. With one major debacle after another, be it what happened to the doctor in Kolkata, the IAS institute incident, or 50 others such things continuing to pile up, do you guys think there will be a tipping point with all these atrocities where the governments become answerable? 

Or is the media too much of a lapdog to create a random enemy that prevents it from happening?

Anonymous 

***

Hi team,

I am a PhD student in the Netherlands and a recent subscriber. Thank you for making the app accessible, as I am partially blind and rely on a screen reader. After struggling to follow your work for a long time, I’m thrilled to finally enjoy the great content you produce.

Regarding my question, I applied for the Government’s  Universal Disability Identification or UDID card six months ago, but haven’t received any updates, and many friends share this experience. This raises concerns about the actual impact of such policies on disadvantaged groups, as they often promise much but deliver little. Recent civil services scams involving disability quotas further highlights these systemic issues. I urge you to investigate the gap between these policies and their implementation, perhaps by inviting a guest on Hafta or doing a story on this topic.

As you made the app accessible, I’ve already helped two friends subscribe and will bring in more. Keep up the excellent work!

Ronak Shah 

***

Hello team,

My name is Jaimin (pronounced as je-min, pronounced wrongly in Hafta 496 and 497). In Hafta 497, the team discussed the Algerian Olympic boxer and her gender. I wanted to know that if there was foul play, would you guys have opposed it? There has been a growing debate about this in Canada and the USA about gender politics (specifically in sports), and the likes of Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk make arguments strongly against gender politics and gender fluidity. The biggest controversy around this was the case of Riley Gaines vs Lia Thomas.

I support a person’s choice of identification, but I think in the West, it has gone too extreme to the point where even they are trying to introduce this concept to kindergarten and primary schools. I think it is nothing short of indoctrination at an early age. This has me seriously worried and compelled to think about moving to another country. I believe this is a worry for many parents in North America.

Watch Riley vs Thomas.

Jaimin Virpura

***

Hi,

Long-time Hafta listener and subscriber here. I really appreciated the focus on Bangladesh in this week’s Hafta (episode 497), but I did NOT appreciate Abhinandan's insistence that the student leaders/protestors are “too young” to be part of the interim government. These students have shown remarkable resilience, mobilisation, and collectivisation power in the face of this movement. They have led to the toppling of an autocratic power purely through this very mobilisation. If anything, we NEED more young voices like theirs in government—be it in Bangladesh or here in India. India is a country of over 250 million young people, and it is sad that we rarely see young leaders in government. We would benefit from having young voices in leadership when our leaders so often fail to address issues affecting young people (ie. paper leaks, unemployment, etc).

Rohini Banerjee

***

Hello!

I am a big fan of Abhinandan and Manisha, love you guys. Hate your 150-word limit.

I’ve been a paid subscriber for the past six to eight months. I might not have fully navigated your app yet, so please forgive me if any of my suggestions are already available.

About me:  

I’m a podcast listener and barely get time to read your excellent articles. My main sources of news are NL Charcha and NL Hafta (which, unfortunately for me, cover similar topics, if not the same).

Suggestions and requests:

1. Balanced discussions:  

I understand that no one from the current regime may be willing to appear on your shows, but it might be a good idea to at least mention the points they are putting forward so we can hear their side of the story.

2. Easy access to key shows:  

I listen to NL Hafta and NL Charcha during my commute and hardly get time to explore your written reports. It would be helpful if you could include direct links to your key shows (mainly podcast discussions and interviews) in the show notes for easy access. For example, I tried searching for Abhinandan’s interview where he changed his opinion on space exploration but couldn’t find it.

3. Better navigation:  

Please consider adding NL Interview as one of the key shows in the podcast tab, or make it easier for us to navigate through the app.

Last but not the least, thank you for keeping the spirit of journalism alive. God bless!

Inayat Khan

***

Hello Manisha, Raman sir, Abhinandan and team Hafta,

I started following Hafta during the latest elections and paid to subscribe because this seemed like a news platform on which I could raise an issue. Thanks for all the work you do.

I suggest and request that you please investigate and educate people about spam and scam calls in India? I get approximately 10-12 spam calls a day, and 2-3 of these are scams. Scams are becoming very sophisticated, and despite being in the news (like the FedEx customs scam), they persist.

Some scammers know your name and number, associated email ID, and sometimes even your history with the brand/service they pretend to be. I would not be surprised if large companies leak this information to them.

If I wasn’t overly sceptical, I might fall for these scams. This makes me worry about my parents and other senior citizens who might not be as cautious.

This might not be in your wheelhouse and extraordinarily challenging, but millions will appreciate any impactful and insightful story that might lead to some action.

Yash Asher

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