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NL Hafta

NL Hafta

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Weekly wrap of events of the week peppered with context, commentary and opinion by a superstar panel. Click here to support Newslaundry: http://bit.ly/paytokeepnewsfree

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2560 - NL Hafta 609 Snippet: ‘Is Judiciary the Greatest Threat to Indian Democracy?’
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  • 2560 - NL Hafta 609 Snippet: ‘Is Judiciary the Greatest Threat to Indian Democracy?’

    The Chief Justice of India’s remark that the polls in question were “only by-elections” in West Bengal is where this Hafta discussion begins. Abhinandan Sekhri calls it “a bit alarming”, and says similar casual comments have come up in earlier hearings.


    Neha Rathi, a Supreme Court lawyer and a petitioner in the SIR cases, says the Supreme Court was the right forum, but argues that the reason behind voter deletions in Bengal remains opaque. Of the “logical discrepancy” ground, she says, “there is no notification about that, it’s still a mystery.”


    Shahrukh Alam, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, calls the SIR a “gambit” and says the Election Commission has “got away with” its “big little power plays”. She says she and others are pushing back on the state’s legal responsibility, but asks, “What about its moral responsibility?”


    Rinchen Norbu cites data showing that the share of people who trust the Election Commission “a lot” fell from 50.8 percent in 2019 to 43 percent in 2024, according to a recent CSDS-Lokniti survey that appeared in the Hindustan Times.


    TNMexecutive editor Sudipto Mondal widens the lens to the judiciary itself. “The judiciary is the greatest threat to Indian democracy. Not from today, from its inception,” he says. He says a brave judge is needed, but “in the long term one hero is not going to save us.”


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    Sat, 03 Oct 2026 - 14min
  • 2559 - NL Hafta 608 Snippet :Ex-Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa Breaks Down the SIR Crisis

    Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa challenges the framing of the Election Commission’s internal rift. Asked by Abhinandan Sekhri whether the “dissenting notes” amount to genuine dissent, Lavasa flips the premise, arguing that if two Election Commissioners share one view and a third disagrees, it is the third (the Chief Election Commissioner in this case) who is dissenting, not the two being labelled as such.

    The conversation then turns to the changes made to Form 6 during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Lavasa argues that the Commission overstepped its authority regardless of whether all three commissioners were in agreement.

    As he says, “The Election Commission of India is not competent to make these changes, because they fall under the principle of subordinate legislation, which ought to be approved by the competent authority — in this case, the government.”

    Manisha Pande brings up the case of Goa, where election officers who had verified wrongly-deleted voters were reportedly unable to restore them to the rolls due to what the Commission described as a “software” limitation. Lavasa is unconvinced that this explanation absolves the Commission of responsibility, offering the segment’s standout line: “Whenever you use technology, it is used to support the law. It cannot impede the enforcement of law or the taking of action in accordance with the law.”


    Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan Bilal & Sound by Anil Kumar.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sat, 26 Sep 2026 - 14min
  • 2558 - Hafta 607: Who Pays For UPI? Is The UCC Even ‘Uniform’?


    This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Rinchen Norbu are joined by Anupam Manur, Professor of Economics at the Takshashila Institution, and Mihira Sood, Supreme Court lawyer specialising in women’s rights.

    The panel opens the discussion by examining the government’s decision to introduce a 0.4% fee on UPI merchant transactions above Rs 2,000, asking what the move means for a payment system that has become central to everyday transactions in India.

    Anupam Manur acknowledges that UPI generates wider economic benefits, but argues that the current model also creates a problem: who ultimately bears the cost of running the system? He explains that the cost of operating UPI is substantial, while the government subsidises only a portion of it.

    Manur says, “When UPI came about, India was miles ahead of the world in some sense. It was truly revolutionary.” But he argues that the costs leave new entrants with insufficient incentive, which has affected private-sector innovation. “Private players are just not incentivized to innovate.”

    The discussion then moves from the economics of UPI to the politics of its messaging. Abhinandan argues that the government has often reduced complicated policy questions to easily marketable slogans: “I think the problem is, like many things that Mr. Modi does ever since he’s come, let’s count his slogans. He’s a fantastic ad man.”

    The panel then turns to the BJP’s push for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC).

    Mihira offers a qualified position. She makes clear that she supports the idea of a UCC in principle, particularly as a route towards greater equality.

    But she distinguishes that principle from the particular version being discussed. She says, “What I have a problem with is this particular type of Uniform Civil Code because it is not based in secularism and it is not based in feminism.”

    Rinchen questions whether we should even call this a ‘uniform civil code’, given the carve-outs that exist for Scheduled Tribes in states like Uttarakhand, where the BJP has implemented its version of it.

    He also argues that the focus on polygamy in the UCC debate distracts from the larger issue of inheritance rights for women. “This whole bigamy, this whole polygamy thing is a red herring, it’s overstated,” he adds, while Mihira breaks down the real legal questions surrounding inheritance if the BJP actually cared about women’s rights.


    Timecodes


    00:00:00 – Introduction

    00:07:03 – Headlines

    00:12:01 – MDR on UPI 

    00:44:03 – Anupam’s Recommendations

    00:48:32 – Manisha on Brazil politics 

    00:55:32 – UCC 

    01:25:52 – Mihira’s Recommendations

    01:28:32 – Letters

    01:46:08 – Recommendations 


    Check outprevious Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters.


    Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Saurav Kr. Ranjan & Sound by Anil Kumar.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sat, 19 Sep 2026 - 1h 53min
  • 2557 - NL Hafta 606 Snippet I Delhi’s Housing Crisis: Planning Failures and Unauthorised Construction

    This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal and Anand Vardhan are joined by urban geographer and researcher Rashee Mehra to discuss Delhi's continuing housing crisis.


    Rashee traces the problem to a structural failure in planning. Using the example of Satya Niketan, a “regularised JJ colony”, she explains how a neighbourhood can be made legal while the construction within it remains unauthorised. “It is actually a very confusing governance structure that we have created in the city,” she says, pointing to the overlapping jurisdictions of the central government, state government and municipal bodies. “That leads to questions of whose responsibility it is.”


    She argues that Delhi’s housing problem cannot be reduced to a question of illegal construction alone. “Housing has to be adequate, affordable, viable, sustainable. Where housing is affordable, it’s not adequate, and where housing is adequate, it’s not affordable. And that’s your catch-22 kind of situation.”


    Anand adds that the crisis extends well beyond university students. He notes that landlords in the city fall into two categories: “One who has made investments in these houses, and one who is living on the rent only... they have less incentive to invest because all the rent that they get, they spend somewhere.”


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    Sat, 12 Sep 2026 - 14min
  • 2556 - Hafta 605 Snippet : GDP Ka Khel: Decoding India’s 7.8% Quarterly Growth Claim

    The discussion opens with Abhinandan Sekhri talking about the flood of commentary around India's quarterly GDP figures over the past two days. 


    Much of it, he says, is “just completely wrong” – although still a healthier public debate than recent controversies over food or language politics. He calls it a small win for Indian media, even if the conversation isn’t always well-informed.


    Vivek Kaul addresses ex-finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg's viral ‘2.5% quarterly GDP growth rate' claim, saying Garg “did what the BJP has been doing to us all these years.” 


    “He made a quick point, he made a simplistic point, which was wrong,” Vivek says, adding that by the time fact-checkers responded, the claim had already spread widely. He then turns to the GDP methodology shift from a 2011–12 base year to 2022–23, a recalibration meant to reflect changes in the economy's structure. He notes that private consumption, recalculated under the new method, has been revised downward by close to $1 trillion over four years – a correction he says went largely unreported by business media.


    Puja Mehra builds on this, explaining that GDP estimates depend heavily on the data sources and proxies used, particularly for India’s large informal economy, which lacks reliable direct data. “GDP, you get to define what GDP is and then measure it in the way you have defined it,” she says, pushing back on the common misconception that GDP should behave like a fixed, universal measurement, “unlike weighing one kilogram of fruit”.


    Subscribe to watch the full conversation.


    Check outprevious Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters.


    Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan. Sound by Anil Kumar.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sat, 05 Sep 2026 - 9min
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