2023

Winston Churchill is credited to have stated, ‘Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business’. The recent appointments to as many as 13 gubernatorial posts, when countdown for Loksabha elections 2024 has already begun, confirms Churchill’s aphorism.
Perhaps the most significant story lurking behind the recent appointments is the increasing profile of northeastern states in the political arithmetic of BJP, by far the most electorally conscious of the contemporary political parties. With (…)

by K Gireesan and Sujit Kumar Paul *
Background
After the State Legislative Assembly Elections held in West Bengal in the year 2021, number of scams unearthed in the State. The Central Investigating agencies such as Central Bureau of Investigation, Directorate of Enforcement, and Income Tax Department investigated the scams like West Bengal Teacher Recruitment Scam, Coal Scam, Lottery Scam, etc. by court orders. There is a sense of anger against the Ruling party of the State, All India (…)

by Shatabdi Das *
Unsafe and disaster-prone, extractive towns are still attractive to migrant workers.
The coalfields around Asansol, 210km northwest of Kolkata in West Bengal have provided a way of life for workers since colonial times. But for the thousands drawn to the area for job opportunities, those same mines also carry the risk of death.
Along with the prosperity coal has brought for mining companies comes pollution, shaft collapses and displacement.
These problems have (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Philosophy of Hindutva acquiring a toxic dimension and politics of divisiveness getting deeply anchored in the body politick of the country, it has become imperative for the revolutionary communists to bring about some minor but significant changes in its policy and programme.
Taking forward its task adopted at the 10th Congress of the CPI (ML- Liberation) to defeat of the supremacist RSS through effective intervention in the electoral arena to challenge and defeat the (…)

8 February 2023
On this Upcoming International Mother Language Day - 21 February 2023
My grasp of my mother tongue, Urdu, is dismal. And till this day I feel rather upset about this. And I do blame the political cum bureaucratic system for depriving the children from the minority community of their mother tongue. Not to overlook the basic fact that Urdu is not taught in a majority of schools in India and with that out of the learning grasp of the school-going Muslim children.
My (…)

by Beena Sarwar
Born: 30 June (or 20 December) 1931, Lyallpur; Passed on: 13 February 2023, Karachi
The great Zia Mohyeddin was already a legend when I first interacted with him as an adult in the mid-1990s. He had recently moved to Lahore where I then lived at Lakshmi Mansion at Regal Chowk. I was working on the launch of weekly The News on Friday, a brainchild of my editor the multi-talented Imran Aslam who revered Zia sahib.
Both were alumni of the prestigious Government College (…)

A Flower Blooms When did all the flowers bloom? Another season coming, Where did all the flowers go? Was it a long time ago? (l) How did all the flowers grow? Love tended every one, Whence will they ever grow? Can they be again be grown (2) Why do I feel so very alone? What will make me less forlorn? Will flowering, colours Do they in empathy also mourn? (3) Memory here in every stone No tears over-brim, Memory wind in Dylan blown The being’s drone, With time and med Better left (…)

Statement by Editor’s Guild of India
The Editors Guild of India
PRESS STATEMENT
February 14th, 2023
The Editors Guild of India is deeply concerned about the Income Tax surveys at the offices of BBC India. As per news reports, BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai were being “surveyed” by teams from the IT department on Tuesday, February 14, 2023.
This comes soon after the release of two documentaries by the BBC, on the 2002 violence in Gujarat and the current status of the minorities (…)

NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM)
PRESS RELEASE
[February 16, 2022]
In the recent week, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has dealt three major, concerted blows to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA):
(1) The Budget allocation for NREGA was reduced to just Rs 60,000 crore in 2023-24 (less than Rs 50,000 crore if we deduct wage arrears from 2022-23). This makes this year’s allocation the lowest as a proportion of GDP (0.2%) in the history of the programme. (2) The (…)

Reviewed by Bronwen McVeigh (University of Rochester)
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Sounding Bodies: Music and the Making of Biomedical Science by Peter Pesic
MIT Press
2022. 408 pp.
(paper), ISBN 978-0-262-04635-0
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Pythagoras’s acousmatic veil feels like an appropriate place to begin a review regarding the intimate connections between the seemingly disparate fields of biomedical and music history. According to the tale, frustrated Pythagoras opted to teach behind a sheath, believing that the (…)