This week on Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Shardool Katyayan are joined by Nitin Pai, director of Takshashila Institution, and The News Minute’s  Shabbir Ahmed.

The panel first discusses the inception and functioning of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – a new department set up by the United States government and headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Nitin says the reason behind something like DOGE “is not just efficiency.” “The ideological reason is to create a government full of people who will act according to the rules of Donald Trump,” he says, adding that federal government employees were laid off en-masse to create fear and uncertainty in the minds of rank and file civil servants. 

On the importance of “small governments,” Shardool says that any system meant to be working fairly working for citizens will be complex. “Mandates given to governments are not for them to run in a fiscally efficient manner, but to run fairly and independently,” he adds. 

Jayashree then delves into the ongoing “language wars” between the Tamil Nadu government and the union government over the National Education Policy’s three-language formula. “The implication that Hindi means the extermination of a local language is true,” she says.

Shabbir adds that the union government demands the NEP to be accepted in its entirety: “The problem the TN government has is that NEP is a uniform policy on education, but education is in the concurrent list. States were not consulted before forming it.”

This and a lot more. Tune in!

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Timecodes

00:00:00 – Introductions and announcements

00:04:01 – Headlines 

00:11:23 – DOGE

00:54:49 – Language row: Tamil Nadu vs Centre

01:28:20 – Letters 

01:48:40 – Recommendations 

Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters 

Produced and recorded by Priyali Dhingra and Ashish Anand.

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