2021

Ira Ghosh, senior professor of English at a College in West Bengal appeals to every voter to ponder whether to cast vote to the Bharatiya Janata Party only after getting affirmative response on 59 queries. She posted the questions in her wall in face book? 1. What has happened to unearthing black money? 2. What is the net result of demonetization? 3. Did Rs 15 lakh get deposited to your account, as per the promise of Narendra Modi diring his electoral campaign for the Lok Sabha elections (…)

West Bengal has a rich tradition of Left politics. However, we are witnessing a crisis of Left politics in the State in recent times. The crisis is organically connected with the politics of social democracy practised by the Left. The parameters of such politics were manifested during more- than- three-decade-long rule of the CPI (M)-dominated Left Front (LF) government in West Bengal.
The Left Front came to power in West Bengal in 1977 with lot of promises. In fact, the land reform (…)

by Atanu Sengupta and Asish Kumar Pal
Abstract:
This study is undertaken to provide the effect of the selling activities at ‘Kisan Mandi’ for standard of living status of rural agricultural households across different social classes and landholding size classes for the state of West Bengal in 2020.The study also identifies the major issues that are confronted by the rural farming households in their endeavour to increase income from farming and allied activities. Based on the survey (…)

by Dr. Nagender Madavaram *
The world has been passing through a critical phase. Conservative governments around the world are targeting constitutional institutions, human rights, and the basic foundations of democracy. The governments are enriching few cronies at the cost of majority people, rewriting history, and harassing minorities. China replaced Marxism with Han Chauvinism after the Tiananmen Square massacre to achieve its dream of establishing the Middle Kingdom to dominate the (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Kerala is famous for electing Left United Front and Congress United Front by rotation. That tradition is going to be broken. I join those who predict that Pinarayi Vijayan will win the coming election and stay on in office, making him the first Kerala chief minister to enjoy a continuum of power.
And that will be good for the state. No chief minister has blossomed the way Pinarayi has. He is hardly the communist party boss he started out as. He is now a leader of all (…)

MUSINGS
17 March 2021
Last week, seeing some very painful- disturbing shots of the Rohingya refugees and their families getting not just uprooted but thrown about in detention centres in and around the Jammu region, got me into that introspective mood.
I have been thinking of how in those bygone centuries, the Jammu and Kashmir region had not just welcomed refugees but also provided them solace to such an extent that not one of them ever went back to their home (…)

by Ranbir Singh*
Family problems created by my drawbacks and alcohol withdrawal syndrome had pushed me into depression in 1993. It got aggravated due to professional problems that I had to face at that point of time. So much so that it had become rather difficult to perform my duties as a teacher and as the Chairman of my Department in Kurukshetra University. However, I was able to get rid of its clutches within a span of three months by sharing my problems with a few persons in whom I had (…)

by Naren Singh Rao
No one would disagree that Sahir Ludhianvi is one of the most cherished progressive poetic geniuses in the galaxy of Indian literary and culture firmament. He was a huge phenomenon in progressive aesthetics, though, in the initial years, when he was relatively young and primarily writing for cinema, many old-fashioned, classicist literary figures and critics refused to take him seriously. In fact, a large section of the contemporary Urdu literary world of that time (…)

by Prof. Narendra Nayak
It is only through development of scientific temperament that this nation can truly realise the worth of the intellectual abilities of its people, writes
I am writing this on the 28th February which is ‘celebrated’ as the National Science Day and the birthday of Sir C V Raman the only Indian who was working in India to have been awarded a Nobel prize in science to be more specific in physics, to date. That too an event which happened a century back! This brings us (…)

Many incidents in the recent days in particular that curtail freedom of speech and expression, compel us to engage once again with the idea and practice of democracy. Freedom of speech and expression guaranteed in the Constitution of India in Article 19 as a Fundamental Right is the essence of liberty. It includes the right to voice one’s opinion, the right to seek information and ideas, and the right to receive and impart information, which are essential to strengthen democracy. However, it (…)