Hafta letters: Farm laws, cryptocurrency, India at COP26

Anonymity kavach on.

I am really sad by the fact that my four letters have not been addressed. Kindly address them.

Abhinandan, I have sent you some mails. If you can spare some time I will be highly obliged. (Shall I send them again in a batch?)

***

Although I have written to Awful and Awesome several times, I have always been a little intimidated to write to Hafta because of the erudite people who usually write here. Therefore, I am writing only with a suggestion﹘it would be great if the NL team could consider getting Meena Kotwal (whose publication Mooknayak is doing an unparalleled job at covering marginalised communities), to discuss the recent spate of violence against Dalits in the Hindi heartland. Love the NL team and a special mention for Anand, whose views I usually don't agree with but can't help but appreciate the views and facts he brings to the table that bring me out of my echo-chamber.

Mittu

***

It was disheartening to hear Anand defend the government again and reduce the farmers protest to an elite movement from Punjab; all those who died, sat for a year, braved lathis and water cannons and daily abuse by both government and Godi media. As stated by the other panelist, it's all about intent. The government railroaded these bills and expected people to accept it. Just like demonetisation and GST which both have failed. Again I wish to know how many days Anand could've braved on roads if needed.

Geetika

***

Hi everyone,

Can you guys please comment on Mr Maria's biography and the controversy around it?

Thanks,

Sandip

***

Hey guys, just writing to express my appreciation for everything that NL is doing with Hafta, Tippani, Sena, ground reports and of course Manisha's Newsance! Have been a subscriber since early 2020 and plan to keep it going. I really look forward to Hafta every Saturday especially as it helps me get on with my weekend chores while getting some solid information and constructive round-table discussions. Although, I would like to say that Abhinandan was severely missed on Hafta 356. No offense to Manisha but I think I relate to him with his socio-communist or communo-socialist political leaning.

Looking forward to the NL IPO some day! :P

Keep it rocking as always,

Abhishek

***

Hi guys,

Congrats on the awesome work, providing unbiased ground reporting. I am writing this letter specifically in relation to Anand's points regarding the farm laws. Disclaimer: Although I am a doctor, my whole extended family is involved in farming in Punjab.

1. The MSP was never a law: True, farmers know that and it has been their demand to make it a law for all the listed crops so even when private players buy their crops, farmers do not become destitute.

2. The movement is led by elites: Again, partly true, but the idea that the laws would not benefit an educated big farmer but somehow an uneducated small farmer who will be able to maneuver the system to his/her benefit is unlikely, if not absurd. These laws are meant to drive people out of their villages, letting corporations take over agrarian economies. If there was a huge shortage of unskilled workers in the city, I would understand the logic.

3. These laws provide no protection whatsoever for small farmers to prevent exploitation at the hands of big corporations. Corporates only care about profits which would come by buying at a lower price and selling at a higher price.

4. Bihar case: Bihar does not have APMC, the farmers over there are suffering. Perhaps Anand can elaborate on why the free market in Bihar has been such a failure.

The articles shared by Anand were behind the paywall, I have the Hindu’s subscription so I was able to read D Gupta's article which was really old so not really insightful.

***

Your panelist Anand Vardhan does not get enough pushback against his questionable views. On last week's Hafta, he claims to disagree with your guest's views about the direction Indian society and the state are taking - despite mountains of evidence. Yet Anand is unable or unwilling to offer even a specific point of disagreement despite being asked multiple times. When the Lakshadweep meat issue was raised, he refused to criticise the Indian bureaucracy for their sinister vegetarianism. Some years back, a fairly long letter painted a bleak but realistic outlook for India. Anand's response was to disagree completely but he could not offer a single rebuttal. I do not care to hear his response to this but I am fairly certain that if confronted with a large, striped feline devouring a human, Anand would entertain the view that he had encountered a carnivorous duck﹘ solely because an omniscient bureaucrat told him so.

Eldrich Rebello

***

Help! I think the media needs to mobilise to expose the absolute uselessness of doing PCR tests at Indian airports. It’s as if a cash cow has been discovered and now will be milked. There is no scientific reason a person, who is carrying a recent test result, should be subjected to a wait and pricey airport tests. Please investigate this!

Pearlean

***

Hello NL Hafta,

I hope this mail finds you well. The last time I mailed was in February of this year with the subject: ‘NL Hafta - Thoughts on social media platforms’. But since it was never read out, I kind of lost motivation to write again...until the last episode.

I mailed in my response to contact@newslaundry.com with the subject: ‘NL Hafta - An Introduction to Crypto and Rebuttal to Jayashree', as I needed more than 250 words.

I hope the letter gets some space keeping in mind how important crypto is.

Regards,

Aroun Dalawat

***

First of all, thanks for doing a great job. I could not resist writing to you after listening to the last Hafta.

We always see panelists disagree with each other and still articulate their views. But what is the point of having a panelist who doesn't want to engage when the other panelist (Aakar) shared points based on facts (number of deaths due to beef lynching)? The argument of any panelist cannot be﹘'read my article' or 'it cannot be articulated in such a short time'. What are your thoughts on this kind of argument? Thanks Manisha for asking him multiple times. I shared this on Discord but I realised none of you look at it. Please do not park it for the next week when Anand joins. I am seeking the opinion of the other panelist.

***

Hi, I love NL but there have been some unpleasant things in the last two weeks.

Starting with last week’s Hafta (As Trump will say it was, ‘bad, sad’)

Anand didn't speak﹘damn those NL letters asking him to shorten his replies. It was sad not to hear his views. Aakar and him would have provided an interesting side to the issues. Alas! Our loss.

Manisha cannot moderate. Sorry. Aakar is not Aakash. She kept interrupting the flow of Jayashree on crypto, and Raman sir was cut so many times by her too. I keep thinking how Jayashree, Anand or Raman sir would be as moderators.

Thank you for not inviting Vivek Kaul for crypto. In his last outing at Hafta, his remark about ‘how can you break Twitter’ just shows that he wasn’t aware of the issue you were discussing. No one has ever asked Twitter to be broken up because it just doesn’t have multiple products. Yet, in the case of Facebook/Meta, Zuckerberg simply cannot be second-guessed, let alone fired, because he controls around 58 percent of Facebook’s voting shares. Specifically, he and other insiders own Class B shares that have 10 times the voting rights of regular Class A shares. To further entrench this situation and ward off the threat of activist investors, five years ago the firm created new Class C shares that give the holder economic ownership, but no voting rights.

Please keep Hafta awesome. It is too pure and pious :)

***

Hi NL Team,

Long time subscriber, haven't written in for a while, but I felt that this must be addressed. I live in Sweden and the press covered COP26 in detail here. At the end of the summit, India was heavily criticised by the Swedish press. Apparently, India at the last minute asked for changes to be made to the resolution. India had "phase out" changed to "phase down" regarding usage of coal in the future.

The Swedish press, among other things, singled out India to have ruined the summit and that they only participated to do China's dirty job.

I saw no discussion about this anywhere across the media in India, including Hafta or Charcha. I was hoping that at least Shardool would say a few words about this on Charcha.

Best Regards,

Rohan Wadhwa