By Ria Chakrabarty On February 21, Seattle made history. After hearing hours of testimony for and against a bill by councilmember Kshama Sawant, the Seattle City Council voted 6–1 to pass her bill and formally ban caste discrimination in the city. This was the first time an American city...
By Nantoo Banerjee The 12-point Chinese proposal to end the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war fails to address a vital issue that led to the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Subtle diplomatic nuances make the proposal look rather weak. It does not even name the belligerent nations. The proposal is...
By Ashis Biswas For some time now, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Bengal has been accused by other opposition parties of effectively helping the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through its decisions, while attacking it verbally. Last week, two seemingly contradictory steps taken by the TMC supremo Mamata...
By Arun Srivastava When the voters across the country have been exhibiting their inclination towards Congress and ensuring the victory of its candidate even from the seat which was traditionally held by the anti-Congress force in Maharashtra, the defeat of its nominee Bajrang Mahato from Ramgarh in Jharkhand has...
By Sushil Kutty If anything, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is relentless in his attacks on the Modi government and he is not afraid of calling a spade a spade, does not matter how many would be waiting to mince his comments to mincemeat. Gandhi makes no excuses and he...
By S.N. Sahu Mahatma Gandhi wrote an article titled ‘Speakers and Politics’ in the Harijan on July 17, 1938. In it he made some illuminating and thoughtful observations. He wrote: “… he speaker’s position assumes very high importance, greater than that of the Prime Minister. For he has to...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak The prediction of normal rainfall in March by India Meteorological Department (IMD) in the range of 83-117 per cent in the country on the basis of the long-period average made the people, the Centre, and the state governments a sort of psychological relief, belittling the...
By K Raveendran This week was momentous for democracy, freedom, liberty and corporate governance in the Supreme Court, a week that saw a number of landmark decisions that made democracy more meaningful being squeezed into the relatively short period. The first and foremost was of course the decision to...
By Harihar Swarup In 1989 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party lost the tag of being a “dominant” party. Since then, it has not figured out how to remain competitive in a multi-party, federal polity. As the next Lok Sabha elections are due in 2024, it continues to face...
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Recrudescence of the faction war in the Kerala unit of the Congress has taken the shine off the plenary session of the party which concluded in Raipur, Chhattisgarh on February 26. The party in Kerala has clearly failed to imbibe the spirit of the unity...
By Tirthankar Mitra The victory of Congress Left combine at Sagardighi constituency by poll in West Bengal lets the seven year old poll alliance taste electoral success after a long time. For after 2021 Assembly election debacle, bitter taste of failure was its constant companion. The results of Sagardighi...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Data from various sources, both government and private, clearly indicate that the unemployment crisis in India is worsening, and is set to worsen further in 2023. Unemployment rate in the country rose from 7.14 per cent in January to 7.45 per cent in February. On...
By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury Finally, Afghan nationals who had joined America’s war on terror and extended cooperation are being hunted-down by Taliban jihadists through biometric identification. It is also learnt that a section of heavily Islamist officers inside Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) are also selling information...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Congress winning three Vidhan Sabha Constituencies and the BJP and its ally winning two in the byelections held for five seats in four states’ legislative assemblies –Maharashtra, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu – is defeat a clear indication of the Congress emerging stronger vis-à-vis...
By Sushil Kutty Before the year is out there will be more than one troubling contretemp for the Bharatiya Janata Party. For the Supreme Court, and for the Modi government, too. Both are in the middle of a war over the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and his...
By Arun Srivastava Riding on the back of the regional forces in Meghalaya and Nagaland, the political ecosystem of the BJP has put its entire effort and resources into projecting Narendra Modi as the invincible leader and new face of the New India. The BJP megaphones in the media...
By Rahil Nora Chopra In an attempt to revive the politics of social justice before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress made 85 amendments in its constitution at its 85th plenary session, seeking to provide 50 percent reservation to scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs), other backward classes...
By Prabir Purkayastha The Ukraine War has now completed one year. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the war is that the New START, the last remaining arms control agreement on nuclear weapons and missiles, has also gone into limbo. On February 21, President Putin announced that Russia has...