Manan
You may not remember, but you were discussing tourism numbers – comparing SE Asia (Bali) with India, and the different ticket prices for foreigners at monuments.
Just to clarify: Europe also has different rates for EU versus non-EU citizens for the youth category (<26 year olds), it is justified by EU taxes funding the upkeep of monuments. The difference there is usually 15–20 percent, unlike India where it can be 15–20 times more. That’s excessive. But differential pricing itself makes sense. The government should just explain it clearly – like in Greece, where I paid more at the Acropolis and didn’t mind, because the reason was stated up front on the ticketing website. I saw this even in Portugal and Spain.
PS: If you read the emails after long, it becomes imperative to explain context on the writer’s behalf – please increase the word limit.
Mahendra
I have some ideas on how you can reimagine Hafta letters (and letters to other podcasts). It’s an intricate idea which I’ll share over a slide deck if you guys are interested. If you like my idea and end up implementing it, I would ask you to give me a free one-year subscription for NL when my current subscription period ends.
Nihar
I strongly reject the label “grifter” made by one of your subscribers and hinted by Mr Shardool. His podcast covers a vast array of topics in the fields of health, medicine, personal development and even the impact of social media. At times he has made missteps while discussing complex topics, but he always acknowledges that he is limited and regularly invites experts.
Such defaming words shouldn’t be used casually against anyone without presenting proper evidence.
Manas
Hi team,
After listening to about ~400 episodes of Hafta I wanted to make one observation and ask one question.
The observation:
The level of discussion has gone down, especially after the 500th episode, which makes me sad. The quality of the panellists is not that good; also it’s become too predictable. Like Jayashree and Raman sir will be on a certain side and Manisha will play a balancing act. Even Mehraj used to sometimes surprise with his opinions. The informativeness of the podcast has also gone down.
The question:
I read your reports on things like electoral bonds, Kumbh deaths. Do you think certain things are normalised in India, like corruption in elections? People have accepted these as normal, people of India forgive a certain amount of corruption and fudging of data. Like in this Air India crash, people know the government will report lower numbers than the actual. Even if a report comes out on that, people will not be surprised.
In my village, everyone knows that there is a distribution of cash before elections, but that’s normal now. In this case, what can journalists or normal people do to make these issues not normal, and make ethics a big issue in this country?
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