2019

Why all these striving, hankering,
when you can see
the clear sign of future shape
of things unfolding
in their allotted places
destined by your waning days?
The journey is now downhill
from all that was youthful,
sagacious, vitally sharp
into the valley of sunset.
Fading eyesight, shuffling steps,
clouding of memory
draw the tapestries
of the house you’re finally in.
Yet they decorate the room
in the dimming sun light,
keeping the frontal view (…)

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent visit to China highlights a new template in regional politics—the rise of Bangladesh as a regional power.
Last year, Bangladesh outstripped India as the fastest growing economy in South Asia—at 7.3 per cent.
Hasina has set the compass to navigate her country to the status of a middle income country by 2021 on the path to ‘Sonar Bangla’ and a developed country by 2041.
To my mind, the three main ‘takeaways’ from Hasina’s China visit are: (…)

by Partha S Ghosh
“What Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow.” This is how the first generation Indian nationalist, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, had certified the political wisdom of Bengalis a hundred years ago. Today the slogan is better turned on its head: What the rest of India thought yesterday, West Bengal (WB) is thinking today.
Something that never happened is happening lately. The Hindu Right is fast occupying the centre-stage of WB politics. In the parliamentary election (…)

by Ashok Celly
There must be something terribly wrong with our IITs. For after four or five years of seemingly intense engagement with a certain branch of engineering a fairly large number of IIT students simply turn their back on it and switch to management, finance etc. without the slightest pang of conscience and assume a brand new identity as financial wizards. Thus the ‘intense’ pursuit of a scientific career ends in a wizardry of sorts. A somewhat retrograde finale! Well, that seems (…)

After the results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections were announced, political parties as well as several political commentators are trying to understand the social and political reasons leading to the 2019 verdict. These analyses have largely focussed on political and organisational limitations of the Opposition compared to the RSS/BJP. While we recognise the urgent need to address these political and organisational challenges, it is equally important to recognise the threat to Indian (…)

TRIBUTE
by Sankar Ray
“If you set your foot in Gopiballabhpur, you won’t feel you are in Bengal. The Chhotanagpur plateau meets the catchment of Subarnarekha river here. The soil texture around is red and crumbled save a few villages. Both tillers and bullocks bleed their feet when they plough their soil for seed-bed preparation. Nobody speaks Bengali excepting outsiders who dwell here for livelihood like some school teachers and employees at community development blocks and forest (…)

by Arup Maharatna
As things stand by now, it would not be an exaggeration to say with hindsight that the entire post-independent India has been reeling increasingly under a stubborn, unquestioned, and endemic reverence for a sentiment-laden emotive notion called ‘traditions’ stuffed mainly by religious mythologies, dogmatic faiths, rituals, and loads of superstitions perceived popularly sacred and sacrosanct. Indeed, evidence is aplenty that an all-pervasive—albeit densely clouded—notion (…)

by Gautam Sen
The Government of India’s latest regular Budget of 2019-20, has a meagre allocation of Rs 45 crores for the development and opera-tionalising of the Chabahar Port infrastructure under the Ministry of External Affairs line of credit to finance this programme, as compared to Rs 150 crores last year. The issue is, whether this programmatic allocation is adequate, and whether it will be sufficient to promote India’s policy on obtaining land access to Central Asia through Iran and (…)

Acting on a complaint from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the CBI conducted searches on July 11, 2019, at the residence of senior eminent lawyers, Indira Jaising and her husband Anand Grover, and in the Delhi and Mumbai offices of Lawyers Collective, a rights issue NGO run by them, for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and offences under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act. Jaising told reporters: “Mr Grover and I are being targeted (…)

All aims of this campaign are sought to be realised within a framework of justice, peace and democracy at three levels.
• Wider Aim To protect and save the life-nurturing, life-sustaining conditions of planet Earth (within the framework of justice, democracy and peace).
• Specific Aims
(i) Elimination of all nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction.
(ii) Restricting global warming to 1.5o C.
(iii) Others aims considered crucial for the wider aim, to be specified from (…)