2021

BOOK REVIEW
Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies Publishers: Vintage Books, London; Pages 444; Price: 14.99 pounds
FOR too long he was considered invincible. The Australia-born American media mogul was all too powerful, who thought he could make and unmake governments — if nowhere else certainly in Britain. And his was a vast empire. Murdoch owned (and still does) hundreds of local, national and international publishing outlets including The Sun and (…)

The “hidden agenda” of the war on terror in Afghanistan has been an open secret. The first inkling of its geopolitical character came when it transpired that even after installing a pro-US regime in Kabul in 2002-2003, Pentagon was in no mood to vacate its Central Asian bases. Finally, the bloody Islamist uprising in Andijan in Fergana Valley in May 2005 prompted Russia and China to orchestrate an SCO consensus seeking the expulsion of the US from those bases.
However, in public (…)

The following manifesto was written by Romanian comrades, who held a solidarity event with Turkish women on 25th March in front of the Turkish Embassy in Bucharest.
On the night of 19th to 20th March, the President of Turkey decided to withdraw the country from the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. He allegedly argued that under the Convention’s protection, the family unit is destroyed, divorces are encouraged, and equality for (…)

* Declining Female Work Participation in India | Samantroy, Sarkar, Pradhan
* 2021 Bengal Assembly Elections Implications for National Politics | PS Jayaramu
* No Bharat Ratna for Ram Manohar Lohia, Please! | Prem Singh
* Thank the left for the right | Jawed Naqvi
* We have two Indias - One is dirt poor, The other is filthy rich | TJS George
* Odisha Assembly Marks Centenary of Gandhi’s 1st Visit to the State | S N Sahu
* Looming Climate Crisis, What Are India’s Pledges & Actions? | Soumya Dutta

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 27, 2021
Political campaigning is in full swing for the assembly elections in many states in India. Among the largest of these states in terms of the size of the electorate is West Bengal; Here a very creative citizens campaign by artists, writers, filmmakers has made its presence felt through a powerful message not seeking vote but celebrating an India that is empathetic, and opposed to all forms of violence and hate.
Across the border in (…)

by Ellina Samantroy*, Kingshuk Sarkar** and Sanjib Pradhan***
Abstract
The paper is based on highlights from the Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS) on female labour force participation. The paper has also used the quinquennial rounds of the Employment and Unemployment Surveys. Women’s participation in the workforce has been continuously declining since 2004-05 though a marginal increase was reported in PLFS 2018-19 with a corresponding increase in self-employment. In this context, (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
An attempt is made here to understand the significance of the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal and the possible implications of its outcome on national politics. Since the analysis is about ongoing events in an extremely fluid and dynamic environment, the prognosis is also necessarily tentative.
Assembly Elections: The Setting
Amidst the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, the Country is poised for Assembly Elections in the four States of West Bengal, (…)

by Sankar Ray
Is the Election Commission of India, headed by Sunil Arora, surreptitiously working to help Bharatiya Janata Party win the West Bengal Assembly election whose first of eight-phase polling will begin on 27 March? Arora, a 1980 batch Indian Administrative Officer of Rajasthan cadre is former Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Airlines and a Secretary in the Ministry of Information and broadcasting, he rose up in career during the prime ministerial tenure of Atal Bihari (…)

The Dickensian statement ‘It was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times’, with which his classic The Tale of Two Cities begins, captures the dominant predicament of our times. It is the worst of the times because we are at a historical stage where humans have apparently attained the power to inflict collective self-destruction through the instrumentalities of science and technology, state power and corporate greed. And this power has assumed such gigantic proportions that no (…)

by Ayush Majumdar and Dr. Gouri Sankar Nag *
Cohort or facade is the deeper point at issue but what is prima facie undeniable is the hype in the atmosphere over Modi’s another well-calculated foreign policy move to visit Bangladesh on March 26 that meets three objectives at one go: taking part in the golden jubilee celebration of Bangladesh liberation (1971-2021), the centenary year of Bangabandhu Sk. Mujibur Rahman’s birthday (born on 17th March 1920) and 50 years of diplomatic relations (…)