2024

* 2024 US Presidential Election on a Knife’s Edge | Vijay Kumar
* Kumar David: a Broadminded Marxist | Rajan Philips
* From chits to chatbots: cheating in India

The decadal population enumeration process for India dates back to colonial times and has been held in the post-independence period in regular cycles under the 1948 Census of India Act. The last census was due in 2021 but was postponed on grounds of health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even though in the following years the Government allowed huge-scale countrywide elections. Population data collated by the census is essential for welfare programme planning in any country. Currently, (…)

The November 5 US Presidential Election is heading for a breathtaking photo finish. As latest opinion poll conducted by the New York Times shows, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are poised neck to neck.
The US Presidential election is regulated by peculiar regulations. The popular votes secured by candidates are not decisive; what clinches the outcome is majority secured in the Electoral College.
Unlike India, which is quasi-federal state, the US is a hardcore federal country, as it (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Is the modern Middle Class the vanguard for a Marxist agitation? This is the question that is making round in the academic and intellectual circles. Probably this question might not have attained so much of seriousness if the Marxists had not put huge amount of stake on the Junior doctors, who have been agitating seeking justice for their woman medic colleague and fighting corruption prevailing inside the health system for last 72 days, for reaching out to the urban (…)

November 1, 2024
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has found a "new enemy" to attack in most of his discourses whom he calls "Urban Naxals". He accuses them of trying to "destabilise" India by "tarnishing its image by joining hands with domestic and foreign forces".
Modi unleashed this campaign against the "Urban Naxals" for the first time in his address to a jubilant crowd of BJP workers celebrating the victory of the party in Haryana Assembly elections at party headquarters in Delhi. (…)

Has the Congress learnt any lessons from its awful defeat in the Haryana Assembly elections, last month? Or rather is it going to repeat the same mistake in Maharashtra Assembly elections slated for the 20th of this month? It appears so.
We may still believe that Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, is sincere about an inclusive Congress and an equally accommodative INDIA alliance, committed to ensuring its joint victory to defeat the BJP at the prospective Assembly (…)

India is among very few developing countries to have a rural employment guarantee scheme. Apart from providing employment during the lean farm work season, this scheme can make a big contribution to important needs like water and soil conservation. Workers can get employment within or very near to their village on the kind of work which improves the sustainable development prospects of their village.
Under this law people of any village can ask for employment according to simple procedures (…)

October 24, 2024
It has been 35 years since the publication of the article Mannusherder Sandhane (In Search of Humanity) by the famous Bengali writer and journalist Gaur Kishore Ghosh in the Sunday Special issue of Anandabazar Patrika on 17 June 1990.
This article was written on the Bhagalpur riots which started on 24 October 1989. This article was written after about eight months. It is not that there was no news article or reporting on the Bhagalpur riots before that. But after reading (…)

After the 18th Lok Sabha elections, assembly elections held in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, two other states - Maharashtra and Jharkhand - will go to polls in November 2024. In a state like Maharashtra, which is politically and economically strong in the country, elections are considered prestigious and all major parties are engaged in big tussle. In the last five years, the developments in the politics of Maharashtra, the change of governments and the splits in the parties have become a (…)

Cheating and plagiarism are already widespread in India’s higher education sector. AI tools are making the problem worse but could also make things better.
In June 2024, a video clip of mass cheating during MA and MBA exams conducted by the Indira Gandhi National Open University in Bihar raised serious questions about the state’s education system.
It’s the latest in a string of such incidents in Bihar.
In February 2023, a video clip surfaced in Bihar’s Samastipur district, which showed (…)