The discussion turns to Arunachal Pradesh, where Tongam Rina, a senior editor at the Arunachal Times, describes the recent armed deployment against Siang dam protesters. “Why do you arm and come against people who are saying, ‘We don’t want hydropower’?” she asks. She says a women-led protest in Pasighat was met with a road blockade and tear gas by the central armed police force.

Despite this, she says, the protesters’ position has not changed. They want the armed deployment withdrawn, jailed activists freed and the hydropower project stopped altogether. She also points to Facebook pages of media houses and young protest leaders being shut down by the government.

Mustafa Haji, legal advisor to the Leh Apex Body, then explains where Ladakh’s talks with the Home Ministry stand. After a consensus was reached on May 22 for a legislature for Ladakh alongside Article 371-type protections, he says the Centre has backtracked and now envisages only a territorial council-type body, which Ladakh has rejected.

The panel also notes the same police chief has overseen the response in both regions, and asks why border communities are met with force rather than dialogue.

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Manisha Pande asks Rohan Venkat, non-resident managing editor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, about the far left’s role in the recent violence in France. She also asks him to give Indian audiences some cultural context on the country’s tradition of radical protest.

Rohan notes that coverage in the US, as in India, has leaned on blaming immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. He stresses that mass protest in France is hardly new, from the student-led upheaval of 1968 to the Yellow Vest movement in 2018.

“You’ve had the right-wingers in other parts of the world point to these things as if it’s a new thing that you’d see large-scale protests in France. And this is, of course, the country of the French Revolution,” says Rohan.

Manisha is quick to remind our audience that the French unrest began with students complaining about poor school infrastructure, a shortage of teachers and an uncertain future.

Rinchen Norbu, meanwhile, dismisses the conspiracy theories, spread by right-wing handles on social media, that the protests in India are being engineered by arms of the US establishment to topple the Modi government. The theory makes little sense, he says, given that it is bending over backwards for the Trump administration.

Manisha also rejects the comparison with the CJP protests in Delhi. For nearly 30 days, she says, there was no arson or looting, barring two police vans, and the defining image was of abandoned shoes and chappals. The comparison, she argues, makes no sense.

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Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Anshu Anand & Sound by Anil Kumar.

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This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri and Rinchen Norbu are joined by Newslaundry reporters Samarth Grover, Astha Savyasachi and Khushi Mehrotra to discuss the police crackdown on protests against CEC Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in electoral roll revisions.

Drawing on their experiences reporting from the ground, the panel examines the detention and alleged manhandling of journalists, restrictions on public protests, and the legal battle over the right to dissent.

Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Anshu Anand & Sound by Anil Kumar.

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