2024

* Free thinking on the occasion of 77 years of independence! | Suresh Khairnar
* India’s palm oil plans wreak havoc on the ground | Ravi Chellam
* A New Model of Employment Creation in Rural India | Sunil Ray
* Algorithm of July Rebellion in Bangladesh | Gouri Sankar Nag
* The roots of the UK’s unrest lie in the warping of genuine working-class grievances | Kenan Malik

The silence of the Modi Government and its Ministry of Finance on a seeming breach of rules in the form of a conflict of interest at India’s market regulator Stock Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is alarming. It has recently come to light via documents. How can the SEBI Chairperson be heading a probe against Adani wrongdoings while having financial interests in entities connected with the Adani group, Calls for SEBI chair to step aside are legitimate. India’s opposition parties have over the (…)

Resolution On The Indian National Flag
The Honourable Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (United Provinces: General) : Mr. President, it is my proud privilege to move the following Resolution:
"Resolved that the National Flag of India shall be horizontal tricolour of deep Saffron (Kesari), White and dark green in equal proportion. In the centre of white band, there shall be Wheel in navy blue to represent the Charkha. The design of the Wheel shall be that of the Wheel (Chakra) which appears on the (…)

OVER TIME, WORLD society has gone through some administrative systems that were and are adopted by more than one culture, often separated by vast distances, that have helped development and progress, locally. Among these are primitive societal groupings, slave societies, semi-feudal, feudal systems, colonial systems, capitalist society, and now its latest avatar, crony capitalism. In between these phases, the Renaissance came in the form of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sufism in India and the (…)

August 14, 2024
The 31 year old lady doctor’s murder and rape at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College seems so brutal that no amount of words or phrases can be adequate to describe that level of barbaric brutality … I was just reading details to the sheer emotional and mental agony her family been through.
At first they were told by the hospital authorities that she’d died by suicide but after three hours wait when they saw her battered-bruised-broken body, it got more than (…)

On 9 August 2024 (exactly a year after the 17 year old Jadavpur University student killed himself due to ragging 31 year old junior doctor, ‘ Abhaya’ (from Panihati in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district), at the R.G Kar Hospital in the heart of Kolkata, was found dead - apparently gang-raped and brutally killed on the night of August 8/9th 2024 at about 3 am. She was initially reported missing by colleagues. Later that morning, at about 8 am the trainee doctor’s body was discovered in (…)

Independence Day is a good time to remember opportunities lost and be ready for new ones that may come
August 15, 2024
Away from the contentious arithmetic of Church growth in the country since its independence in 1947 is the loaded question of how it has engaged with the Indian state in negotiating a protected niche not just for itself but for more robust religious freedom for people of all faiths.
India completes 77 years as a free nation and a sovereign people. Jawaharlal Nehru in (…)

Tonight at 12 o’clock India is completing 77 years of independence. Similarly, in neighboring Bangladesh, 49 years are being completed since the martyrdom of Sheikh Mujbur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh. On 15 August 1975, some people of the Bangladesh Army attacked his residence and killed him and all the people present in that residence at that time, including small children. Sheikh Hasina was in Germany at that time, so she was saved. And ten days ago, Sheikh Hasina Wajed not only had (…)

As we celebrate 77 years of freedom and head towards our 78th Independence day on 15th August 2024 my mind flashes back and remembers all the freedom fighters I have met and recorded over the years. I met Kannusamy, at his modest residence at Prai in Malaysia, who was with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. I asked him that since he had been born and raised in Malaysia and had never set foot on Indian soil what motivated him to join the freedom struggle for India? He lost (…)

The question is: How to create productive and sustainable employment opportunities in rural India? I am here putting the question straight because I am yet to see any significant measure available to resolve the crisis of uninterrupted growth of unemployment particularly in rural India. Hardly any attempt is made to look beyond what is being suggested or implemented traditionally for decades. No worthwhile outcome the rural economy is left with as a result. The academic community is (…)