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.34 Days From June 21 To July 24, 1991 That Shook The Indian Economy
By Nitya Chakraborty On June 21, 1991, the 70-year-old Congress veteran P V Narasimha Rao took oath as the Prime Minister of a minority government amidst massive political uncertainty over its survival. The Congress had got only 232 seats as against the usual majority of 272 in the Lok...
Folk Artist Devi Had To Apologise For Singing Bapu’s Bhajan
By Arun Srivastava Hindu zealots have been busy tearing India and its cultural and social ethics apart, but now they are out to Talibanize India and its social and cultural order. What happened in Patna at the Bapu Sabhagar auditorium to celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of former Prime...
Trump’s Threat Of A Tariff Wall Has Grave Economic Implications
By Prabhat Patnaik Donald Trump is threatening to use tariffs as a weapon against other countries. He has already made three threatening statements: first, he threatened the BRICS countries that if they dared to move away from the dollar, then they would have to face 100 percent tariff in...
Is Bihar CM Nitish Kumar Sulking For The Bharat Ratna?
By Rahil Nora Chopra The Bihar Assembly elections are to take place in October-November of 2025. Union Minister Giriraj Singh is asking for the Bharat Ratna for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and former Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik. In October 2024, the JD(U) had put up a poster outside...
Myanmar’s ‘Tarbuj Brigade’ Gets Set To Enact A Regime Change
By Tirthankar Mitra Longevity of a regime, democratic or otherwise, rests on its popularity. A dispensation has its days numbered after meting out reprisal to its people for what it considers to be acts of defiance. Myanmar’s military junta is one such dispensation. Once feared as a monolithic regime,...
Live-Streaming Has Improved Courtroom Accountability
By Shivam Jadaun The judicial system has not been left untouched in a world increasingly defined by digital transparency. Courtroom live-streaming, once unthinkable due to its perceived threat to the sanctity of judicial proceedings, is now rapidly gaining momentum as a tool to enhance accountability and transparency. At the...
The Real ‘War On Christmas’ Is A Class War Waged By Bosses
By Liza Featherstone In the right-wing imaginary, the War on Christmas had a good run. Fox News host John Gibson alleged in a 2005 book that liberals were planning to “ban the sacred holiday,” and a moral panic was born, yielding outrage after outrage almost every year. This year,...
Governance In Delhi Being Sabotaged Before Election By Officials Themselves
By Dr. Gyan Pathak A Joint Director of the Department of Woman and Child Development and the Special Secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department of the National Capital Territory of Delhi placed public notices in newspapers on December 25, 2024, stating that two state government schemes of...
Bihar Set For Political Change After Arif Mohammad Khan’s Entry
By Arun Srivastava The National Democratic Alliance meet of Wednesday had convoluted implications. It was meant to evolve a mechanism to counter opposition narratives, primarily to work out a to protect BJP strongman Amit Shah from Congress from attacks on his insinuations targeting Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of...
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly In The Delhi Assembly Elections
By Sushil Kutty Three political parties. Three sets of politicians. All three fighting for control of the warren called Delhi. Biting, sniping and snapping at each other’s heels. Calling each other names. Enticing, inducing and bribing the voters with ‘schemes’. Lying and casting aspersions at each other, this is...
Globally, 2024 Was Marked By Intensifying Conflicts With No End In Sight
By Dr Arun Mitra A year back when we entered the New Year 2024, we all hoped that the year would bring an end to the conflicts around the world and reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, even though this hope was filled with fear and scepticism. Despite the...
RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat Speaks Once Again With A Forked Tongue
By P. Sudhir What is one to make of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s speech regarding the raking up of new temple/mosque disputes? In his speech in Pune on December 19, Bhagwat disapproved of the raking up of new temple/mosque disputes. He said that Ram temple was a matter of...
Trump Is Bent On Beating Putin In Expansionism, Come 2025
By Anjan Roy From the early indications so far available, the New Year—2025— is all set to be tumultuous for all nations. India must be wary and take every possible caution and steps to navigate the forthcoming year of uncertainty. The USA, with its sheer size and weight in...
Shyam Benegal, A Filmmaker With The Common Man’s Take On Life
By Tirthankar Mitra Even at the risk of uttering a cliché, filmmaker Shyam Benegal was in a class of his own. A path-breaker, he took his audience to places where they had never been before. And this is no sweetener to enhance the reputation of a man who is...
The Spectre Of Anti-Communism Is Once Again Haunting North America
By John Wojcik The United States Congress has recently passed a horrific piece of legislation calling for the infusion into the nation’s public school system of a curriculum that teaches middle and high school students about the alleged evils of communism, including the absurd claim that communists have killed...
BNS’s Black-And-White Treatment Of A Rainbow Of Masculinities
By Aishwarya Avraj In 2024, India introduced a legal reform with the implementation of three new criminal laws, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BNA) (criminal laws) replacing the existing Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860; Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973...
Restoring Global Credibility Of India’s NHRC Is Going To Be Tough
By Dr. Gyan Pathak India’s National Human Rights Commission has been losing its global credibility very fast. Since June 1, 2024, the post of NHRC Chairperson has been lying vacant and its re-accreditation with the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) was deferred for 12 months, for...
Shah’s Ambedkar Statement Negates The Sacrifices Of Freedom Fighters
By Dr. Arun Mitra Perplexed with Amit Shah’s statement on Dr Ambedkar in the Parliament, the drama created by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the entrance gate of the Parliament and later registering an FIR against Rahul Gandhi was a very low level and reprehensible act with the...
