Manipur violence, CJI-Modi’s Ganesh pooja, Kamala-Trump debate | Chhota Hafta 502

Newry welcome to another episode of haa which we're recording at 3 in the afternoon on the 12th of September which is a Thursday and uh we want to start off by thanking you for topping up the NL Sena fund for the elections which is Jammu and Kashmir election and harana election and Raman sir your editors are traveling yeah the two of them I think there's a team of five persons in jam and Kashmir and Manisha producers and and our guy this another reporter is in harana so he's first of all touching those areas which are near Delhi okay so from next week he go going to new today the new wine shop no not those no no he's not touching those places what kind of press Vala is he now these journalists are only reporting I'm hoping and not at the very famous Ang sh because our journalism is supported by you and you guys stopped up that Fund in exactly a week uh the fund of shasan going to Israel and wherever he can Gaza and wherever we can get entry has not been quite a swift to get topped up we still about 2 and a half lakh rupees short but I'm hoping you guys will Top it up up the tickets are booked the crew is leaving next weekend uh or this weekend this week oh Monday so they would have left basically one day after you this is released uh so do top that up so that once they've gone there we can also fly them back uh the link is below here is the QR code it'll stay here for a while so that you can scan the QR code contribute to this NL Sena and support journalism pay to keep News free after all those things out of the way let me first introduce the panel and then we can get the headlines let me start off with a drum roll who's joining us after 3 months jrey from chenai can you tell how excited I Look to be back hello everyone it is I with my British accent of course so also joining us is a guest Amit Kumar who has been on the haa before many of you already have met Amit hi Amit thank you thank you uh and finally one more announcement before we get to the oh sorry I forgot people in the studio raan sir there a problem hello our edin chief ranal who we are looking forward to the election coverage and hopefully few payall stories so that there's some incentive for muat to subscribe uh sorry to offend those people who have written to me saying how dare you call us muat k it's a term of endearment I'm saying it affectionately muat but if you're muat Kor who are making decent money consider subscribing and supporting journalism instead of always always whining about why is Mukesh B Amani and uh what is adani B's first name goam goam and Gotham by why are they buying all the media up because we have you so we can then grow and do some more journalism uh and whining is also nice for kataris but not for impact for impact you have to scan this QR code subscribe pay to keep News free also joining us in the studio is shardul without his beard hello you have got to beard shardul yes like frequently now like I was testing soup two days later so I decided uh but we'll start off with Manipur which is again seeing violence and there have been you know certain incidents that have got some sort of coverage of course not the kind of uh fact checking that uh which which was the channel um it was I think NDTV was doing a fact check of trump speech P do some fact check of what's happening there you know so anyway so you know we have the executive of East Mojo here so Amit this new quote unquote wave of violence is it something we've noticed or did it never stop uh so so that depends on the when do you start like see if you're looking at July August the violence had sort of come down there is no denying that and um I would even go to an extent to say that most parts of infal like within the capital city there was a semblance of normaly like there were programs happening like you know University started classes and all you even had exams and everything there was a semblance of normality but such is the tragedy that is Manipur today that when the violence was not taking place it was just flooded like Manipur witnessed some of the worst floods in May and June in fact last to last week we published a story about localities in Nal that have been underwat for five months now like children are going on like to go to school the kids have parents have to carry them in their arms cross the you know water and that when you were not hearing about violence people were suffering nevertheless and this issue that the core issue has been festering since Independence H about the reservation as STS right and then state government slept on it and now that issue is sort of on periphery like that's nobody talks yeah yeah that's not even the point now for 16 months the state on and off has been on fire like now Amit told us something which is which anywhere else in the country or world like a a a part of a major city submerged for over a month should be a big news because water logging will again create infection and but we didn't even Hur hear it anywhere but we hear if it MTO Bridge gets flooded yeah so that again that comes that like everybody in the country at least in press or like in public Circle and in conversations you know treats Northeast like a stepchild twice removed stepchild sort of a thing we'll come to it if it's necessary the other thing which I I remember from our last year's conversation I don't know if Amit remembers that the big problem is that can I ask a question though um just to take him back to what you were saying before which is when you said that you got that press release saying it wasn't a drone but it was a sniper but then you spoke to your army sources and then what like was it no no see that's the thing that's the interesting part the press release that was issued by amju all Manipur journalist Association they saying that there was a drone attack but there people dead because of sniper sniper something that was released from drones or something like that but the Army sources have made it very clear that there is no official confirmation of drone attacks I see also also let me I will just add here that a committee was set up and they submit supposed to submit their report tomorrow September 30 they're going to submit a report now the problem is the moment you question whether it is a drone attack or not you are branded anti- Pro cookie we have been branded as cookie Mojo okay because and you know why that happened because for the simple reason that on May 3rd when violence broke we were in chur chanur yeah but this is actually a a big problem that even we've encountered while talking to reporters or trying to commission stories because you know some reporters who genuinely want to do a report are they're just saying that it's going to be very difficult because you know depending on you know what your ethnicity is exactly it's very difficult sorry goad no we had two reporters uh you last year who went to Manipur yeah so one was in the cookie area right the other was in myi area so the one who was in myi area cannot go to cookies and the one who was with cookies cannot go to myis and and the thing is both of them were from here but if you have some local reporters it's even more difficult because they will have some you know Affinity or just some connection to some you know identity Community identity Etc but you know for a lot less you know whether we talk about Delhi every now and then there is it should be leftenant Governor's rule which pretty much it is now from time to time Tamil Nadu Governor's rule Bengal should be Governor's rule break down Law and Order who is the governor of Manipur and has he or she at any point said that this broken down so it should be Governor's rule 2022 Manipur had elections and after a long time um a party came back to power on it in majority on its own BJP won out of the 60 seats 32 or 33 seats were directly under the BJP by the time Bing formed the government 55 out of 60 mLs are with the NDA so it's not as if he did not enjoy we have videos of him and Sharda Shard was the BJP president is the BJP president they were in chur chanur campaigning for these very cookie MLS that they are now talking as if like you know there are some CIA planted but PA H who is one of the more prominent cookie leaders shardi was campaigning for him 6 days before the violence began on May 3rd on 27th of April Shri B Singh was supposed to go and cut ribbons for a public gym and a park and in 2022 after he became the CM just few months later he had inaugurated the churachandpur Medical College H he was in power but what has happened is that since the day the violence began from that day onward there has been absolutely no attempt by the BJP want to discuss Justice chandrachur had a Ganesh Puja it was Ganesh chaturti by the way Ganesh chaturti greetings to those of you who celebrated uh and the prime minister went in full maharashtrian looking topy shopy because of course Maharashtra and he came in for a lot of criticism on online and now it's becoming a bigger deal the Congress and the BJP are going head-to-head on that I don't even know if it's a Congress or it's just some social media accounts now I personally don't think there's anything wrong with this in fact I would have liked it had Rahul Gandhi also gone I mean are we just are being a bit overreacting or am I under reacting ra start with you see uh I have been in this profession for very very long time so uh I've been to the courts also there is an Unwritten rule that all these judges they will stay away you know uh from the Press from the and and uh from the other uh you know administrative uh you know officials because they they want to project that image that they uh whatever uh you know they decide on does not get influenced by any familiarity so there's no familiarity basically so that's the unwritten rule uh it's not just among the Supreme Court judges I have seen it because when I try to meet the judges they said the well we should be happy that this is happening openingly that the I think the idea that the Judiciary is compromised is something that you know people are always talking about online I talked about it myself people like goam baa will tweet saying that it's now an Executive Court but now I mean the fact that they called it TV crew I feel like they've almost made it official I think I think it's absurd I think no one is saying that the CGI and the Prime Minister will not have occasion to interact socially but I think this very over sort of display very ostentatious invitation to to the prime minister to perform a Puja in your house with a TV crew in in tow I feel like that specifically is sort of designed to send a specific kind of message which it has and also ran says that there is an Unwritten rule uh that you know they shouldn't sort of have the sort of interactions on full display but that actually is a written rule my thoughts are going to trigger some people so I think people who think this is inappropriate or just one do not understand the social context of the second is they are making big fuss and it's s it's sort of ay but it has to be said like nobody ever made this noise about ifar parties ever did they but was there was there a chief justice the point is I think a criticism isn't not just a festival being celebrated because we should get the context right so that it is the Chief Justice and the Prime Minister the two which are supposed to be counterbalancing forces it's not like a party of MPS hanging around yeah it is the executive and the Judiciary heads of both in a bon homie which often would be in a position where they would have to stand against each other that and the other thing is I agree with ran that there was an un Unwritten Rule and generally people didn't do it but if he wears his religion and his beliefs on his sleeve doesn't make him a worse judge that is not the let let me finish let me finish but that's not the criticism no that's you can be religious on that note did everybody watch if not the full debate some parts of the Trump versus Harris debate yes full debate full okay ran sir no I could see just the first uh economic and I I I found uh I mean this Democratic candidate Harris she started quite uh she was nervous when she started speaking about it and uh the question that was asked was not answered she straightway went to the fact that this is what I have planned but they wanted to know if in the past four years how have you is the American poorer better off or not better off not so so which she did not answer so I've seen just the first uh you know few minutes so I don't think I'll be able to uh yes of course I've read about it so let me start I think ra Raman smarter than all of us who wasted our time watching the entire de it was so much fun yeah I I thought it was time well spent and also for the last two days I've been binging on the late night shows in fact yeah I don't think Harris was answering questions but also I feel like she got Trump on the defensive very fast which isn't again it's not a very it's very clever strategy but I read a line that explained this very well which is that she was basically Bugs Bunny luring Elmer fed into a trap which is a child could do it and she did it and it great so what always intrigues me is that politicians like like Trump can use this sort of insane rhetoric that I mean it works really well for them you know America's greatest economy we supplied all the ventilators uh Haitian immigrants are currently eating cats and dogs Springfield that that Democrats believe that babies can be killed after their born you know that's what abortion rights are about but I think it's a really low bar to be worse than Trump I think only someone like Biden managed to achieve to lose a a debate to Trump so the pre-debate shows that we telling that how each of the teams is prepping mhm apparently she had a studio made which looked like that with the same lights they had a stand in for Trump what he would be that you know it was like like amitab rehearsed for KBC right right they got a KBC Studio made for him to rehearse in with the same lights shs everything so she had all that and uh apparently the only rehearsing for him was that dude don't lose your and I must say on that for the full uncut podcast subscribe to news laundry and pay to keep News free the best way to listen to the hafta and indeed all our podcasts is through the news laundry app you can download the app by clicking on the links given in the show notes so do download our app and get the best podcast experience and also pay for news and support a new news media ecosystem that news laundry is trying to encourage where we are accountable to you because we run on contributions that you make we don't take government ads we don't take corporations ads so that news serves the public cuz when the public pays the public is served subscribe to news laundry click on the link in the show notes 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