2021

It is now official. The Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference has confirmed that Pope Francis, known to the Catholic community of the world as the Holy Father, will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for thirty minutes in the Vatican this Saturday, 30th October. It is a courtesy call by Mr Modi, who will be in Rome for a scheduled international conference.
The high profile scheduled meeting of US President Joe Biden with the Pope, has invited global interest because of the issue of a (…)

by Vijay Kumar
After long time, marked by deference and deferment, the Supreme Court finally asserted itself and lived up to its constitutional role of sentinel on qui vive by appointing an expert committee headed by Justice R.V. Raveendran with wide mandate to look into the widespread violation of Right to Privacy through surveillance by Pegasus Spyware. The intervention of the Court has established the supremacy of rule of law over political will to power, to use the expression of (…)

by Pramod Ranjan *
The Covid Pandemic has fundamentally transformed the way our world functions. And this transformation is not limited to just some things going online. It will bring about root-and-branch changes in every realm of human life.
In our times, not only are inter-human relations changing but the relations between man and nature, man and other living tenants of this earth and between man and machine are also being reinterpreted.
It is not that these changes have begun (…)

by Chemmalar. S *
Abstract
Indispensability of health workers has deeply entrenched during the global pandemic situation which amplified the demand for their service to tide over the precarious condition. Realizing their moral imperative towards the society, health workers have put their own life in peril towards safeguarding the humanity. The clueless situation has raised the prominence of preserving the workforce of medical care to tide over the condition. Given the current pandemic, (…)

by P S Jayaramu
18th October 2021
The much-awaited Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting is over. There was speculation that it would be a stormy affair with the ‘reformists’ openly criticising the leadership for the sorry state of affairs in the Party and demand a discussion on the report of the Committee which went into the dismal performance of the Party in the recent assembly elections. Going by media reports, no such thing happened at the meeting. On the contrary, the CWC meet (…)

by Nishit Navin and Sangam *
The speculations are rife and doing rounds in the political climate of Punjab. Punjab’s former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh is going to launch a party and may ally with the BJP for the upcoming state election. This has kept the major political parties on their toes. However, there is a new twist to the politics in Punjab which is going unnoticed. Congress put a Dalit leader as chief minister of the state. To certain political pundits, it is a (…)

IMPRESSIONS
"National interests" has become a phrase that challenges the citizen, frightens him and threatens him all at once. In a vibrant democracy like India, it won’t be easy to come across two people who agree on what is "national interests." Narendra Modi’s idea of "national interests" certainly will not be the same as Rahul Gandhi’s idea of it. Mamata Banerjee will have her own interpretation of the idea and Pinarayi Vijayan’s will be different from that of all the others. Yet (…)

Dhurjatiprasad Mukhopadhyay (1894-1961) was a prominent Bengali intellectual who simultaneously belonged to the cultural world of Bengal and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh (UP).
Dhurjatiprasad’s formal educational journey was a non-conventional one. He passed the school-leaving Entrance Examination in 1909 in second division. However, he got highest marks in both English and Sanskrit in the said examination of the year. He passed the I. Sc. Examination from Ripon College in Kolkata (then (…)

There is no doubt in the fact that Sikhism actually was a revolt against the Brahmanical system and superstition. Guru Granth Saheb is perhaps the only holy book which contains matters from different religions as well as those of various Sufi Saints including Kabir, Ravidas, Baba Farid and others. The aim of Sikhism was to create an egalitarian society and definitely Punjab that way is far better than many other states in India where violence against Dalits is rampant. However, there are (…)

Recently the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee has written a detailed letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the man-made floods created in her state due to excessive water discharge from Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) Dams. In particular she has criticized the discharge of about 10 lakh acre-feet of water between September 30 and October 2 2021 which caused serious devastation in lower Damodar region before the festival season.
She has reminded that she (…)