By Tirthankar Mitra Come Wednesday, Congress leaders in West Bengal will step out on a march of Bharat Jodo Yatra whose success hinges on the participation of Left party activists in it. The fact stares the state Congress leadership in the face that the numbers lie with the Left,...
By Harihar Swarup Nine assembly elections will take place between February and December 2023 stretching from Telangana to Tripura. Collectively these polls will be the last chance for opposition to test the mettle of the incumbent BJP before the May 2024 general elections. Any realistic assessment of the next...
By K Raveendran India’s 2022 began with hopes of a rebound from covid-induced downturn, which materialized to a large extent as the year progressed, but is winding down to a close with dark clouds beginning to appear on the horizon over threats of a return to the pandemic environment....
By Anjan Roy If any one thing defines 2022 it is Russia’s Ukraine war. Coming close on the heels of the covid pandemic, unleashed by China’s callus and lackadaisical handling of the initial outbreak, world’s woes are brimming over. Bad luck would not come alone, in the very closing...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak We have faced several dramatic weather disasters which claimed far too many lives and livelihoods in 2022. From extreme floods to heat and drought, weather and climate disasters affected millions and cost billions, indicating that climate change has intensified this year, and in the next...
By Sushil Kutty It took 75 years but at last at least one politician has confessed that India is not a safe country for Muslims. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui told this to his children, a son and a daughter. Growing up they lived the privileged lives...
By Tushar Kohli Even as India has signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework deal to address the ongoing biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and protect indigenous rights, the Union Government has been harbouring plans to amend the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 in a way that may dilute the institutional structure...
By James M Dorsey This decade and beyond could be the era of Middle Eastern sports. It may not have sunk in yet, but the Qatar World Cup was the kick-off rather than the finale. Qatar and Saudi Arabia will be this decade’s focal points of Asian sports. By...
By Craig Johnson Earlier this month, Argentina was rocked by a story so big that it broke through the country’s jubilant anxiety over the World Cup — the vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (or CFK, as she is commonly called in the Argentine press), was found guilty by...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Two things have clearly emerged during four-days 42nd session of AITUC held during December 16-20 in Alappuzha. First, India is plagued by decent work deficit and dismal status of unorganized sector, and the second, the unity of trade unions, the only tool that can counter...
By Dr Arun Mitra With the news that few cases of new Omicron variant which is said to have shorter incubation period and faster spread than the previous COVID infections is a matter of concern. However we have enough experience now from the past and should utilise that for...
By Arun Srivastava If the tone and tenor of Narendra Modi’s speech at the high level meeting held on Thursday to discuss the strategy to fight covid is any indicator, it is obvious that Rahul Gandhi would have to terminate his Bharat Jodo Yatra even before reaching Delhi, not...
By Rahil Nora Chopra Former deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Sachin Pilot, is now again in the limelight. After Congress snatched Himachal Pradesh from under BJP’s nose, the party wants to deploy him extensively in campaigns across the Hindi-speaking states like Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, in addition to Rajasthan....
By Sushil Kutty Prime Minister Narendra Modi wasted breath warning Indians that “Covid is not over yet”. Who does not know that? Also, asking Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi to mask up was asinine. If nothing else, the Gandhi scion is clairvoyant. Rahul was the first politician to warn the...
By Prabhat Patnaik There has been much discussion in public about the index of industrial production for October 2022 being 4 per cent lower than the index for October 2021; and quite rightly so, since no obvious explanations like a Covid-induced lockdown or even its residual lingering effects can...
By Sankar Ray Dr. Anita Bose Pfaff, daughter of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Emilie Schenkl, has expressed her dismay at the erosion of secular values in India in the recent period and how her father had always fought for building India as a secular state. In an interview...
By Abhisek Roy Barman The 28th Kolkata International Film Festival has come too fast, only 8 months after its last incarnation in this year’s April, and this time it lasted seven days, between December 16 and 22. The promotional campaigns were intriguing from the outset: giant banners were installed...
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav Early this week, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made headlines in international media for claiming that the next global financial crisis will come on the back of cryptocurrencies. He added that any attempts to regulate and help cryptocurrencies grow will end...