Opinion
Appeal
The legacy of IPA, founded by Nikhil Chakravartty, the doyen of journalism in India, to keep the flag of independent media flying high, is facing the threat of extinction due to the effect of the Covid pandemic. Only an emergency funding can avert such an eventuality. We appeal to all those who believe in the freedom of expression to contribute to this noble cause.Raghav Chadha’s Rise From Anna Movement To AAP’s Punjab Win
By Harihar Swarup It was the fag end of the ‘India Against Corruption’ movement, led by Anna Hazare. Raghav Chadha, who was 22 back then, began his practice as a chartered account. He sought an appointment with Arvind Kejriwal, the prime mover of the campaign. And the rest is...
Football World Cup: Qatar Puts Its Best Foot Forward
By James M Dorsey This is Qatar’s year to put its best foot forward. A major producer of natural gas, the tiny Gulf state is under the magnifying glass as it enters the final phase of hosting the 2022 World Cup later this year and emerges as a potential...
CPI(M)’s 23rd Party Congress Must Help Unite Seculars Against Saffrons
By Nitya Chakraborty The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is holding its 23rd Party Congress in Kerala this month, from April 6 to 10. The delegates attending this five-day session will be deliberating on both the national and international situations, and, on the final day, will be adopting...
Centre Has To Extend All Possible Assistance To Beleaguered Sri Lanka
By Kalyani Shankar The ongoing Sri Lanka crisis finds echoes across the Palk straits in Tamil Nadu as refugees have started arriving in the state over the past fortnight. Since the Eelam war ended in 2009, this is the first time refugees have arrived on the Tamil Nadu coast....
Imran Khan Has Pushed Pakistan Into A Major Constitutional Crisis
By Sankar Ray Pakistan’s Prime Minister Kaptaan Imran Khan is in an existential crisis that pushed him personally into a political quagmire. His stature worsened further following the crucial observation by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial during the hearing of a suo moto matter following the...
The Task Is Cut Out For The CPI-M At Its 23rd Congress
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: All eyes are riveted on Kannur in Kerala, where the 23rd Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is set to begin on April 6. Strengthening the party at the national level to make it politically more relevant. That will be accorded top...
India And China To Be Most Exposed Due To Stranded Assets
By Dr. Gyan Pathak India and China would be the most exposed countries in the world to shutting down of fossil-fuel infrastructures in the mitigation pathways to climate change, and if the existing units would continue to be operated as historically, they would entail CO2 emissions exceeding the carbon...
Putin Type Authoritarianism Gets Approval In Hungary, Serbia
By Sushil Kutty The West is agreeable so long as the world runs by its wits though the world for the West is limited to the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and the Nato-wired European Union. The rest of the planet can go to hell, or...
Public Mental Health In India: A Case Of Misplaced Priorities
By Mukul Bhowmick and Sangeeta Rege In 2017, President Ram Nath Kovind stated that India was facing a “possible mental health epidemic” and asserted the need to provide accessible mental health services by 2022. Almost prophetically in India’s Union Budget for financial year 2022-23, mental health found a...
RBI Has Failed To Check Surging Inflation
By Nantoo Banerjee Prices are bubbling up. Food, fuel and fertiliser costs are surging almost daily. Inflation seems to have got a free pass in India. The country’s wholesale price index, which tracks goods at factory gates, rose almost 13 percent from a year earlier in January. The gauge...
Economic Crisis In Sri Lanka Turns Into A Major Political Imbroglio
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav After an economic crisis, Sri Lanka has plunged into a political crisis now. On Monday morning, news reports said that the entire Sri Lankan Cabinet has resigned. There were also rumors that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa had resigned or would resign soon but his office...
The Fall And Fall Of Mayawati In Uttar Pradesh Since 2014 Elections
By Arun Srivastava A degenerated ideology will ultimately give rise to a perverse electo-political system and create a deviant political vacuum. Notwithstanding the BJP grabbing the power in Uttar Pradesh in the recent assembly election, the state suffers with an acute political vacuum. An insight into the nature of...
Doubling Farmers Income In The Country By 2022 Is A Distant Dream
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Modi’s doubling farmers income by 2022 has miserably failed. There were many hurdles in the way, and chief among them was the faulty and unreasonable policies of the Centre itself. It resulted into a situation in which tomatoes were being sold at Rs 3 per...
Punjab Government Has Every Right To Claim Inclusion Of Chandigarh In The State
By Sushil Kutty Even King Soloman wouldn’t succeed in breaking this stalemate. There is one baby, Chandigarh, and two states claiming to be mothers, Punjab and Haryana, both unwilling to sacrifice the baby or hand it over to the other. By right, Punjab is the “mother” and should get...
Kejriwal Now The Front-Runner In The Opposition Ranks
By Amulya Ganguli In the race to be the first among the opposition leaders for taking on the BJP at the national level, it appears that Arvind Kejriwal has edged ahead of Mamata Banerjee for the moment. The reason is not only the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) impressive victory...
International Transgender Day Of Visibility Passes Unnoticed In India
By Gursimran Bakshi The International Transgender Day of Visibility is an annual awareness day, celebrated on March 31. It honours the courage of transgender and non-binary people around the globe, who do not conform to the societal standards of heteronormativity. They have suffered systematic discrimination and prejudice based...
Rupee-Rouble Oil Deal Could Be Key Plank Of Putin’s Sanctions-Busting
By K Raveendran The proposed rupee-rouble trade for oil will be a key ingredient, along with Russian insistence on rouble payments from European gas customers, in Putin’s sanctions-busting programme. The Biden administration has obviously seen the implications of an India-Russia oil deal and it is no surprise, therefore, that...
Amit Shah’s New MCD Bill Spells Doom For Delhi Local Bodies
By Harihar Swarup Last week, Union house minister Amit Shah introduced a brand new bill within the Lok Sabha to unify the three municipal bodies of Delhi (MCDs). Whereas the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) says that the bill was brought to rid the MCD of its perennial monetary disaster,...
