A review of NL Hafta by Dheeraj, Pranay, Ayush and others

Hello NL Team,

I am a regular listener of NL Hafta and I would like to request you to consider discussing the below topics in one of the coming episodes.

Every time a Hindu is arrested for hate speech or objectionable content, it becomes national news. Even the so-called left of centre media outlets and journalists debate on it. However, the arrest of many Muslims for similar objectionable speech/content doesn’t generate the same level of discussion. Doesn’t it show the institutionalised bias in the media?

How often does police demand judicial custody of the accused if he/she is a Hindu? Actor Ajaz Khan was sent to 14 days police custody for objectionable content, whereas the recent cases against Hindu hatemongers have almost always resulted in bail. What this shows is that there is no need to change the constitution to discriminate against Muslims. Arbitrary use of existing laws is more than enough to accomplish that goal.

I request Newslaundry to keep an eye on police actions and court decisions in hate speech cases as there seems to be a pattern here.

PS: I am Hindu if that matters to you in anyway.

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

***

Hello everyone,

Greetings everyone. FYI I’m a subscriber (this line is just for Abhinandan!).

This is regarding Hafta 232 and especially about the discussion on CCTVs in classrooms. I’m shocked and appalled that none except Raman Sir had any objection to it. Wish Raman had elaborated a little. Or better you could have dialed in Apar Gupta or Meghnad. Let me try to paraphrase how damaging this move is and what’s wrong with this idea.

All the cases that have happened—molestation or of violence against kids—have occurred outside of the classrooms, so to have CCTVs covering corridors is all fine. In fact, this is enough to also keep track of when your kid has entered the school and when he/she has left.

The other aspect of watching kids from classroom is bizarre and outrageous for multiple reasons. Why do parents wants to watch their kids from inside of a classroom? What is their reason? Madhu mentioned she wants to so that teachers won’t say certain things that they say when they know no one’s watching. Fair enough. But have we tried to extrapolate this line of thought and applied it to other fields? I will come to why it is wrong a little later but how about cameras at your workplace? Boss needs to see what you are doing, right? He/she pays you. What if you are not doing your job? What if you are bad-mouthing your boss? Sure, boss would not like you to bad-mouth them. Sure, a boss would not like certain language. Hope you’re getting where this is going. Are we okay with this?

Like Raman Sir pointed out in his example from a farmhouse (?), surveillance at times isn’t about constantly being watched, it is about that consciousness, about the thought in one’s mind that they are being watched, every minute of the hour. Surveillance is about power, it is a statement, that you are watched, we know every move that you make, we are the masters and well, you are … I code for money and I tell you I’m pretty good at it. But to get a task done, there are dozens of ways I think: I scribble on notepads, I just scratch the pen on paper intelligibly, I open multiple sites to check how a simple task can be done. Most of the times I find how I don’t know the answers to simplest of questions which when answered would help solve the larger problem. I know where I will get answers to these small problems and I search for them on the Internet.

But you know what happens when someone sits beside me or a senior/manager is peeping on my screen? Just last month I spent an hour or so coding but I would get stuck, delete, code again, delete until I finally told my manager that I will get this task done soon enough but I’m not able to code while he’s sitting beside me. He left my desk and I solved the issue in next 20 minutes.

Imagine being followed by a police officer every minute of the day. Would you now act, talk, behave same as you would in his absence? Someone would constantly watch you or not, behavior of students and teachers will change in presence of cameras inside classroom. Now Madhu’s teachers might not bad-mouth and that’s good thing but there would also be teachers who would constrain themselves, they will not try new ways of teachings which they thought they would try, they will be conscious of themselves, their movements, their dress, everything. Where does all this leave the teaching process? It would become mechanical, robotic. I know many teachers translating things into local language and not just explain things in English in even an English medium school—this would stop now. Many parents would object to many things without knowing the finer aspects of teaching which would then make teachers spend more and more time in the principal’s chambers than in classrooms.

As consciousness of cameras and their parents watching them dawns on children, they will soon not talk with their classmates in case their parents think that they don’t know something and or are asking/copying from classmates. This is just an example of what peeping eyes can do to one’s behavior. I can go on and on about this but the point is, cameras and “being watched” changes our natural behavior. And that does not aid our natural growth. This will only alter our ability to try new things and push forward our world into what is unknown today. We would be reduced into specimens of one kind and one kind alone.

Thanks and regards,

Dheeraj Kalgutkar

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Dear Team NL Hafta,

Hope all of you are doing well.

I am not a research scholar or an NRI. So I am not certain if my letter would be read, as all letters read on the past Haftas are either of the two. 

Anywho. 

First of all, great job, Team Hafta. I don’t think enough credit is given to the job you’ve been doing. Especially to Kartik Nijhawan, Anil Kumar and Satish Kumar. Keep it up, people.

I agree with Anand when he talks about people who are liberals in theory and not so in practice. Lot of people I know are vocally progressive in public but alarmingly regressive in private.

If you’ve observed the people enabling the men accused in the #MeToo movement in India, they were all  “Main Bhi Woke” types (as Abhinandan likes to say). I have this theory: the more a person acts and displays wokeness, the more caveman types he/she/them  is/are.

See what I did there (wink wink).

The moment I heard the intellectuals intellectualising about installation of CCTV cameras in Delhi. I knew something was wrong. I did a quick survey of people that have kids in school. Boss, not only does every private school have a CCTV installed in every nook and corner; they provide live feeds and updates of every moment of the student to their respective parents. So I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that all these intellectuals having kids in top notch (read expensive) private schools would be checking on their kids through the school app while crying “privacy, privacy”.

With warm regards,

Pranay Nikam

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Hi NL team,

This mail is specifically in response to the new NL Sena project that you all are planning to do.

FYI, every registered corporate entity in India needs to file a form BEN 2 wherein they’ll need to give details of SBOs (significant beneficial owners) of their entity. This would be useful in case of finding the real individual owner of the corporates having confusing ownership structures. The last date for this forms to be filed is 31.07.2019 which may get extended by a month. However, if it’s owned by only individual owners, then this form is not to be given.

Here’s the link of that law.

You’ll can get this detail by paying ₹100 (or ₹500) per company from MCA website in MCA21. Even if that form is not to be filed, you can get the details of shareholders from that database itself.

Note that if the media is owned by a non corporate entity, then it’s very difficult to get the data. Perhaps RTI can be used for that.

Looking forward to your report. Good luck.

Regards,

Ayush S