Hafta letters: Personality politics, casteism, French actress on Newsance

Hi NL team,

New subscriber here. Just for a bit of context, I've lived in three different countries in my 28 years of life so I don't have too many roots in India, although I spent my early years here and currently work here in Bangalore. Forgive me if I don't have the required local context for this question.

I've seen politics here become much too personality-driven instead of policy-driven. People will vote for people advocating policies blatantly against their interests simply because of charisma or charm or relatability or whatever. My question is, do you think politics would be better if we had something like the US ballot initiative system, where instead of a person, a policy is on the ballot? Such a system in Florida resulted in the legalisation of marijuana despite the state overwhelmingly voting conservative. Would love your views on this.

Apologies for the long read. Love your work. Despite not always agreeing with you, you guys are restoring my faith in Indian journalism.

Siddhant Banerjee

***

This is in continuation of the previous week's email. Abhinandan said that the director of Samrath Prithviraj should make it clear that the film is not historical. Well in this interview, he did exactly that.

The director has repeatedly said that the film is based on Prithviraj Raso, which is not a historical account and in which Prithviraj does indeed kill Ghori at the end. But the “progressive lot” seem to ignore such interviews and facts and keep piling on their narratives. It seems to me “facts are not facts” is becoming their motto as well. That's why I said that Abhinandan, please don't only read the progressive lot. Please also try to listen to the other side.

Ashish

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Hey everyone,

Been listening to Hafta since the start (episode 20 or something). Subscribed after it went behind the paywall and have been an NL subscriber since, with a few NL Sena projects here and there.

Never wrote. Even after enduring ‘we will make this episode Let's Talk over each other specials' :), or when I wanted to engage with a panelist or you guys.

Straw that broke camel's back: we finally got an app that was supposed to enhance our podcast listening experience and an app I could shamelessly force all my friends to download. Now when the app is here, it 'force updates' twice a week or even more. That means when I open the app, I first HAVE TO update it before I can read an article or listen to a podcast. This is bad UI and plain stupid.

If we are releasing bug fixes, can we just release them as regular version updates and force update only when we are certain that most fixes are done or if there is a major vulnerability.

Sorry if I sounded rude. Love NL.

Roushan

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Hi NL team,

I appreciate your hard work and efforts. Regarding Hafta 381, I was surprised when Manisha concluded Fahad’s opinion on the necessity for the Central Vista project saying, ‘You wanna leave a mark, your legacy.” He did not mention that he thinks it’s an ego project, but I also did not hear him contradicting her. I think listening to the guest is essential in managing a discussion panel. It was also ironic that Mehraj blamed every issue on casteism and then a listener wrote complaining about it. I don’t agree with Mehraj’s claim that ‘jizya’ was a secular rule. Hindus perform the last rites by burning the body while the Muslims do it by burial. If tomorrow the government passes a rule that “to make better use of land, everyone should perform last rites by burning”, then will we call it a secular move or will we say that it is an imposition of one religion over another? Most of Mehraj’s issue with casteism seems to be a problem of poverty and income disparity.

Have a great day.

Deepak

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I have been using the Newslaundry iOS app for a couple of weeks and let me tell you the transition from Apple podcasts to the app has been painful to say the least. Here are a few issues:

- Long startup/bootup time.

- No feature to automatically pre-download the podcasts that I want to listen to over wifi.

- If I were to leave the app to do something else it will pause, and when I return back it will forget where I left off, boot up the app from the beginning, again, the long bootup time. This is the BIGGEST ISSUE with the app.

I’m certain that even Newslaundry staff with iOS devices will be using Apple podcasts to listen to their Hafta.

Please send this feedback over to the technical team and send me the Apple RSS link.

Dr AK

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My shortest letter ever.

Now we know why Newsance is so good – we have got a renowned French actress as the anchor. Could you provide us the link on the next Hafta?

Dhiraj

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Thank you for reading my email in Hafta 385. I may have missed a point. I'm against forceful religious conversion laws. This could be because I come from a inter-religious family, my mom is a Hindu and father was a Muslim. Anyways, keep up the good work and do let me know if any of you ever plan a visit to Toronto in the future. I’d love to be a part of it.

Syed

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Thanks a lot Newslaundry team for your amazing products/services:

1. Ground reports

2. Newsance

3. Consti-tution

4. Sansad Watch

5. NL Hafta

These are the reasons I pay for a Newslaundry subscription and not out of charity or rigorous pleas by Abhinandan. Keep rocking!

Inder