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The Wire Talks is back, but with a new look. Now, host Sidharth Bhatia will chat with guests on video as well as audio, on issues such as culture, politics, books and much more. Our guests will be well-informed domain experts. The idea is not to get crisp sound bites but to have a real discussion, resulting in an explanation that is insightful and offers the audience much to think about.
29 Episodes
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There has been growing anti-immigration and anti-Indian sentiment in many countries, including in Australia. A Member of Parliament recently claimed that the government was bringing in too many Indians so that they would vote for it.
The government criticised her and her own party demoted her status. A government report in 2021 called Indians a “national asset”. “The educated people and those in white collar jobs know this, but the rest of the populace does not,” says Surjeet Dhanji, an academic fellow at the Australia India Institute and a scholar of migration. “But when you have the Liberal party saying we need to cap migration or cap international students, and when Indians are among the leading numbers of migrants, what kind of message are you sending?”
The Indians are polite, they work hard, they pay taxes, they speak English, but “there are no Indians in leadership roles,” she said to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast conversation. “We need a concerted effort by the Indian community to tell the layperson who watches the news or is on social media that Indians are contributing.” But Australians don’t like it when “migrants bring their home issues to this country.”
She explains that after the anti-Indian violence in 2008 and after Covid, migration slowed down and a huge backlog built up. “But the numbers of Indians are no more than of any other community,” she said. However, they are visible in many blue collar jobs such as couriers, hospitality, security guards.
The agitation in Nepal last week had three dimensions—the total collapse of the state machinery, multiple forces joining the GenZ agitators and unprecedented destruction of public and private property, says Mahendra P. Lama, senior professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and an astute observer of Nepal for several decades. Lama was in Kathmandu during the agitation and also spoke to several local citizens.
“There was a huge gap between GenZ and the government,” he said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia, ”but there was a pattern to the violence-it was well sequenced, with arson, looting, mayhem, killing.” He expressed surprise that the army was not summoned on the first day and the political parties remained quiet.
Over the past 10 years, there have been 14 prime ministers, some lasting barely three months and none of them had done anything for the country or its citizens. He said Nepalis were not violent people but the “Maoists had inculcated a culture of violence in the country.” He embossed that over this period, “India had nothing to bring stability to Nepal or help build institutions,” he said, adding, “India needs to change its strategy in Nepal.”
What is the cause of the severe flooding seen in northern states and cities?
“Climate change and its impact is intensifying rainfall pattern. The bigger failure is how our cities are designed, planned and managed and continue to grow,” says Mihir Bhatt, Ahmedabad based architect and urban planner. Bhatt is the director of the All India Disaster Management Institute, which works on initiatives in risk reduction and climate resilience.
He said there was a “design mismatch.” “Our stormwater systems and drainage networks are built for rainfall pattern for the past, not for the present, even less for the future,” he said to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast conversation.
He also gave the example of Gurugram, where “rapid urbanisation filled in natural catchments that once absorbed excess water from the neighbouring area.”
Flooding would be seen in rural and urban areas for the near and perhaps long term future, but many solutions are there. He gave the example of Nagaland, where 39 local government bodies came together to work with the state government on disaster mitigation. “I am not a pessimist” he said. “Indians can build something if we let them.”
The reason why the Marathas have begun agitating for reservations in recent years is because there is a “rural as well as urban crisis” in the state’s political economy, says Sumeet Mhaskar, professor of sociology in OP Jindal University. Marathas are getting no access to economically secure jobs because more and more government jobs are contractual.
Mhaskar explains the process for getting reservations is not the Government Resolution (GR) such as the Maharashtra government has done. “Reservations can only be given by the Backward Caste Commission.” Nonetheless, he says, now the “OBC groups will agitate. They may go to court.” One danger for the OBCs is that the Marathas will stand for election in seats which are reserved for OBCs, he explains.
He also feels there is a political dimension to the entire agitation, especially since Fadnavis is a Brahmin and power traditionally has been held by Marathas. He points out that elections to municipal bodies are to be held soon and if Devendra Fadnavis hadn’t granted what the agitators wanted it would have had an impact on the elections.
A rupture has taken place within our community relationships and this will take a long time to heal even if the government changes. This is the candid analysis by Manoj Kumar Jha, academic and one of the more articulate Indian parliamentarians.
“Dogwhistling has moved from the fringe to the centre,” he says in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.
Jha’s collection of columns has recently been published under the title In Praise of Coalition Politics and Other Essays on Indian Democracy. The essays cover a variety of subjects ranging from the caste census, Waqf properties, the RSS and government servants, and Jha’s letters to Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Jha says university appointments are made keeping in mind the candidate’s affiliation to the organisation. “The only thing spoken in favour of the new vice-president is that he is a die-hard RSS man. Is this a qualification for a post where the first one (vice-president) was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan?”
Jha says, “If I love my nation, I must critique my government.” He points out that Nehru sat through debates where he was critiqued. “What is so sacrosanct today that you report from Assam and sedition laws are applied?”
Historian Richard M Eaton says he is “very concerned” at the erasure of the Mughals — “one of the most spectacular empires in the world” — from school history books.
Eaton, one of the most eminent historians of pre-modern Indian history, debunks some myths about the Mughals in this podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.
He pointedly says that though the Mughals were Muslims, “they saw religion as a very personal affair and rarely tried to convert non-Muslims.” According to him, “they saw fooling around with religion as something that would only endanger the stability of the state. Akbar and Aurangzeb were both very explicit about not allowing religion to interfere with state policy.”
It was the British who painted the Mughal rule as a “dark period”, because that way they could “project themselves as bringing peace, stability, efficiency” to the land which had till then experienced incompetent rule.
He talks about how for a long time Aurangzeb was revered and venerated among his subjects, Muslims as well as well as Hindus. “His grave was a pilgrimage site,” he says. All this changed after the five volume biography of Jadunath Sarkar in the early 20th century.
Eaton makes it clear that this villainising Mughals will not change the basic fact that their influence on art, culture, good, language and everything else in India is all pervasive and part of India. “You will never get rid of the Mughals, you will have to live with them.”
There is a widespread belief that the 1950s were a time of great Hindi films, in terms of stories, songs and film-making. Seventy-five years later, fans still remember those songs, those stars and, most of all, those directors. We look back and call it the Golden age. What does that mean?
“I think it’s partly because the 1950s are also seen as a kind of Golden Age of India,” according to Rachel Dwyer, a former professor of film at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) who has written several books and articles on Hindi cinema. “A figure like Nehru at the time was seen as a major world figure. But also something exciting going on in Indian cinema at the time.”
“We saw several great directors working, the rise of major stars, playback singing being normalised and the stories too, which were usually about a hero looking to find a place in this new world, really spoke to people in a very direct way, and not just people in India, of course, but people across the world,” she said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.
Two of the major directors of the period were Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor. This is the 100th birth anniversary of Guru Dutt and last year was Raj Kapoor’s birth centenary.
Dwyer discusses their work, through their films Pyaasa and Shri 420. “These have a great appeal about a certain innocence, about a freshness, and the way that they just happen to be really good entertaining films.” She also analyses their personas – the Raj Kapoor on-screen persona, the ordinary everyman, and Guru Dutt the poet.
The Election Commission’s announcement in Bihar that a citizen should prove his or her credentials to vote has sparked outrage among political parties. They say that a large number of marginalised communities will lose their right to vote.
“It is indeed very problematic. To shift the onus of establishing identity or citizenship on the voter is fraught on principle in a democratic country,” says Ashwani Kumar, senior advocate and a former minister for law and justice and also former Additional Solicitor General.
“What was the justification of excluding Aadhaar or ration cards from the process,” Kumar said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. He said that there is an element of distrust which has cropped up in the last couple of years. “So Election Commission now has the duty to dispel to the satisfaction of all concerned that its circular or its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) will not be exclusionary.”
He also spoke about declining standards of Indian democracy. “Political opposition in a democracy cannot be treated as personal enemies,” he said. “All parties, without exception, are being seduced by the temptation of using the harshest possible language against political opponents. That is what we have come to.”
The Devendra Fadnavis government has withdrawn its proposal to introduce Hindi in the early classes in schools in Maharashtra because of the opposition’s pressure. In Tamil Nadu too, there has been pushback on the introduction of Hindi by the Modi government.
“In Maharashtra the BJP cannot afford to take electoral risks,” says Professor Alok Rai, academic and author who has taught in universities in India and in the US and has written a book called Hindi Nationalism.
But, he points out, the BJP does not want just to introduce the language. “It has a larger cultural agenda behind it. Hindi carries within it a coded language,” he tells Sidharth Bhatia in this podcast. “The agenda is a Hindu agenda, an upper caste agenda.” The introduction of Hindi in the south “consolidates their support in the Hindi belt.”
Also, “School Hindi is very different from what is spoken on the streets,” he says. Everyday Hindi, that is Hindustani, "has evolved". “School Hindi is sterile”, he says.
India sends students to the US in record numbers, but this academic year, applicants are feeling anxious before they head out. The changing policies of the Trump administration is likely to cause delays and tougher immigration questioning, among other things. Moreover, it is likely that the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, which allows F-1 visa holding students to work for a year or more, will be modified if not terminated. That was one of the great attractions for foreign students in the US. So is it still worth going to the US to study? “Absolutely,” says Viral Doshi, who has advised Indian students heading to the US for the last 20 years. “No other country can match up to the US,” he says, in sheer number of colleges, in the kinds of courses it offers and in the experiences one can have.
He acknowledges that parents have anxieties but “I tell them, have patience,” he says in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. “Almost 50 percent students have already got visas and others will too, maybe a few weeks late for the first semester.” He says universities depend foreign students and are saying they will allow students to come late.”
“America is not the same as it was some years ago. Things have changed. No more internships and no more jobs or work experience.” And most important, he adds, “Avoid political activism.”
Every year, parts of Mumbai’s streets and tracks get flooded after the rains, but this year, the floods happened in the southern parts of the city. South Mumbai is generally considered immune to this kind of monsoon flooding, but this year, things were different. Citizens of Mumbai have got used to such inconveniences during the rainy season, especially in the first few days and weeks, but things are getting worse year after year. “Poor planning is part of it,” says Hussain Indorewala, teacher and urban researcher, in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. “Planning in Mumbai has come to mean real estate schemes”, he said. “ Apart from real estate development, there is very little thinking on transport, sewage, water supply etc.” he says. He says this kind of flooding will probably happen every year. The digging for construction activity is one reason, and the open space around the new construction is reducing, could be another. The Coastal Road too has shut down many water channels. Mumbai needs better governance and one idea suggested is to have a directly elect a mayor and representatives. “Decision making now is done by bureaucrats and the state government.
Veteran Indian diplomat Talmiz Ahmad, who is an authority on the Middle East, says Turkey has been bringing up Kashmir for a long time but relations were slowly warming up.
“But it helped Pakistan during its conflict with India” and that was too much for India, he said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.
“Turkey is on a high and wants to expand its footprint to South Asia,” he said. “Pakistan brings geopolitical value to Turkey and if they get together, they will form a formidable alliance.”
Even so, Ahmad said, he is a strong believer in diplomacy and he felt that India should continue on the diplomatic path. “Its important also to talk to those who disagree with you,” he said.
Discussing India’s growing ties in the Gulf countries, Ahmad, who was Ambassador to UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia, (twice), said that “our ties go back over a millennia” and “India should be seen to be “as a role player in the security scenario in the region.” “We should be an influencer in the Gulf region.”
With the election of a new prime minister in Canada, there are hopes that relations between India and Canada will improve. Under Justin Trudeau, the previous one, ties had plummeted after he made allegations that India had a role in the killing of a Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“Trudeau had five Sikhs in his cabinet and was responding to diaspora politics,” says veteran journalist Daniel Lak in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. Lak was with Al Jazeera as the US and Canada correspondent and earlier had served in India, Pakistan and Nepal as a BBC correspondent.
He says Sikhs have been coming to Canada for over a century and most of them are here to make a life for themselves rather than get involved in what he calls ‘diaspora politics’. “They are two percent of the Canadian population and have established themselves in several sectors including transportation."
“I get India’s anger,” he says, at the Indian insistence that supporters of Khalistan be restrained.
The new prime minister will also at some stage have to manage this part of the relationship, but “he is a technocrat” and Canada will want to increase trading links across the world, including with countries like India, especially after the US President Donald Trump threatening to make Canada the 51st state.
The discussion includes issues like the loss of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and immigration and from India.
The killing of 26 tourists in Pahalgam on April 23 came as a ‘shock’, because never before had terrorists targeted tourists, says Anuradha Bhasin, an astute observer of events in the Union Territory.
It's not that terrorism had disappeared after the removal of Article 370 in 2019, as the Modi government constantly claimed, Bhasin said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.
The reaction among ordinary Kashmiris was one of grief, she said. “They came out to help, as they have on every occasion earlier – that is Kashmiriyat.”
But, she said, the constant pushing of the “tourism narrative” to show things were normal was creating “alienation” among the locals. It hid the “ugliness of the Kashmiris being economically disempowered—new land laws, allowing outsiders to bid for contracts” were causing resentment, she said. “There was a complete erasure of what is happening in Kashmiris.”
Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar went “much beyond his Constitutional Role as the Presiding Officer of the Rajya Sabha” when he spoke against the Supreme Court. “His language was intemperate,” says Supreme Court Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.
“The conjecture is that he is auditioning for a higher role,” Hegde said.
Pointing to the unseemly comments of BJP MP Nishikant Dubey against the Chief Justice of India, and also the social media campaign attacking the CJI, Hegde said it all seemed like a “concentrated attack”.
“Indian democracy is not in a healthy position,” he said, and the situation was more like an “elected autocracy”. There were occasions in the 1970s when the judges were criticised by the executive but “the language was never so crass” as now.
Journalist and author Kunal Purohit began monitoring Hindutva WhatsApp groups several years ago and saw how they disseminated propaganda. “The things people were then scared to speak openly are now all around us,” he says to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast discussion.
Purohit, who wrote the book H-Pop about songs spreading hate, says he finds those songs being played all over the place. He followed Ram Navami processions in Mumbai recently where marchers hurled the most obscene messages openly towards Muslims. The police stood by mutely. The songs of hate were being played openly and loudly.
His social media posts forced the police to file FIRs against the organisers of the march, but he says “the genie is out of the bottle”. Such demonstrations rarely took place in Mumbai even a few years ago.
“Basically what was happening in Uttar Pradesh has now come to Mumbai,” he feels.
The Waqf (Amendment) Bill that has now come into force will effectively take control of any Waqf (Charity) property from the Muslim community wherever there is a dispute.
“For example, Sambal mosque will be affected and will now come under the control of the Archeological society of India,” explains Shadan Farasat, senior advocate in the Supreme Court in this podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. “It could be very problematic going forward” because in any dispute arising with a government agency, the community is bound to lose control of the Waqf property, he says.
“From the community’s perspective, it is important to use the existing Waqf properties well.” At the same time, it should be challenged in the courts. “Some provisions are unconstitutional.”
He says the passing of the bill will have political implications—“certainly there will be an impact in Bihar, where elections are due later this year.” The Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar, a part of the coalition with the BJP, had voted in the Bill’s support.
Academic and commentator Dr Ashok Swain of Uppsala University in Sweden is in the unique position of having his Overseas Citizen of India status cancelled twice by the Indian government. The government did not give any public reason for doing so but said it had “sensitive information” which it submitted to the courts when Swain challenged the decision. On both occasions the courts overturned it. “I have great faith in the Indian judiciary,” Swain told Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast decision.
Swain’s writings and tweets have been sharply critical of the Modi government. Now his X account is ‘withheld' in India and he says all his tweets before December 2024 have vanished.
“I got a lot of threats of a serious nature” and petitions to the university, but his colleagues have been very supportive. “OCIs of many academics have been targeted.” However, he insisted he did not want to indulge in “victimhood”.
Plans to develop the Great Nicobar island, initiated by the Niti Aayog, have alarmed scientists and activists alike. A massive project, involving a transhipment terminal, port, a township, an airport and more, has been made. It is estimated to cost over Rs 70,000 crore.
Pankaj Sekhsaria, who has been associated with the islands for over three decades says on every front – environmental, geological and social – the project will ruin the islands. “The township is for accommodating 3.5 lakhs people: residents, tourists, etc.,” he tells Sidharth Bhatia in this podcast.
“A reserved forest has been denotified – its not easy to cut down a forest,” he says. He lists the damage to the local flora and fauna. “The beaches there are the nesting place for the great leatherback turtle – that will be finished."
Generations have come and music genres have changed, but The Beatles and their music go on and on.
In this podcast, Oliver Craske and Sidharth Bhatia, both fans of the world’s first pop group, try to crack the mystery of their enduring popularity 60 years after The Beatles broke up.
“Their music sounds deceptively simple but it was actually not simple,” says Craske, who has worked on several books about the group including The Beatles Anthology: Get Back, which accompanied the Peter Jackson film on them.
“Lennon and McCartney – there has been no song writing duo like them,” says Craske.
The two analyse Rubber Soul and Revolver, and how with each album The Beatles evolved, trying out new instruments and recording techniques. "Many of their songs, such as 'A Day in the Life' were revolutionary when they came out,” Craske says. “The group just continued to evolve.”
And of course, no discussion on the group is complete without speculating why they broke up.
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