Tag: Politics

No armchair politics. Mamata Banerjee in a file photo. Photographer Unknown A weakened opposition is unlikely to force Mamata to improve governance. Expectedly, Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) has returned to power in West Bengal. Yet, the scale of its triumph boggles the mind. The AITC has, in fact, tallied the maximum amount of seats ever won by a single party in West Bengal. The results, similarly, will baffle the surgeons of the Left-Congress alliance, for they had…

Fade out. Free wallpaper by Dipanjano. There’s little to choose between the Trinamool and the Left in West Bengal Bengal started to vote on Monday and will do so for a month and a half. This is the first time in recent memory that a party other than the CPM, as part of a ruling Left Front, is the incumbent party. This is also the first time in recent history that the Congress and the Left parties, after having long…

প্রত্যয়। কানহাইয়া কুমারের গ্রেফতারির প্রতিবাদে। জেএনইউ, দিল্লি। ১৪ ফেব্রুয়ারি। পিটিআই জওহরলাল নেহরু বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে রাষ্ট্রীয় রক্তচক্ষু দর্শনের শুরুতে অনেকেই হয়তো ঠাহর করতে পারিনি ঠিক কী আকার নেবে এই ঘটনা। কিন্তু কয়েক ঘণ্টা বাদেই পরিষ্কার হয়ে যায়, পড়ুয়াদের নিয়ে মামুলি কিছু বাদানুবাদের ঘটনা এটা নয়, একটা বিরাট পরিকল্পনা এর মধ্যে লুকিয়ে আছে। জানা দরকার কী এবং কেন সেই পরিকল্পনা। দু’দিন আগেই এই পাতাতেই (‘লেঠেল দিয়ে…’, ১৬-২) ‘সিডিশন’ নিয়ে অত্যন্ত জোরালো ভাবে বোঝানো হয়েছে, কোথায় দক্ষিণপন্থীদের চিন্তায় দৈন্য, কেন বারে বারে সেই দৈন্য…

Sachin Tendulkar of India takes a breather during the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2003. Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images and is under copyright. Sachin Tendulkar’s nomination for Rajya Sabha has created the desired effect for the Congress, at least across the cyberspace and the various media platforms. For the last week or so, nothing else has generated more debate across the public forums as this piece of news. The reaction, on the whole, has been hostile towards the proposition…

It is time we understand that for a figure like Subhas Bose, there is no greater honour than to die in the battlefield in the war for freedom, insists Harvard’s Professor Sugata Bose, in an expansive interview with Sayandeb Chowdhury The setting of the large, airy, six-windowed second-floor room at Netaji Bhavan is doubtlessly the most fitting location for an interview of this nature. This room is directly above the room where he, the talismanic subject of our discussion, for…

Representative image of a retro television set with antenna This election is a landmark event not just because of the possibility of a long-overdue change but also because the parties may have understood the difference between mass and polity, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury Tomorrow, Bengal steps into a landmark election. It’s a livewire event — complete with high-voltage, intensive campaigning, television debates, repartees in the media and of course gauche, garrulous throwaways. For reasons historical and emotional, this election is being…

Bengal burning. Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash The politics of annihilation and obstructionism that is becoming endemic in the state portents very badly for its immediate future, whatever be the nature of change, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury Something is rotten in the state of Bengal. The current cycle of proactive and retroactive violence and the overall collapse of services is so overwhelming that one cannot but feel delirious at the vulgarity of the current deportment of its political class.

The much-discussed Peepli (Live) has garnered attention to the logic of employing satire to a case (or a cause) that is hopelessly tragic. The film’s veracity, depicting one of the biggest agrarian crises to have precipitated in Independent India, is unquestionable. The makers have rightly targeted the assorted symbolisms of what we call the ‘establishment’ — the administration, the government, agencies of policymaking and the favourite butt which everybody kicks these days — the 24X7 television media. The critical value of the…

A lane in North Kolkata. Photo by author Kolkata must bear the cross of being the centre of gravity of a political culture that only knows how to traumatise millions Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe/ through me is the way among the lost people. …Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter! The dismal Situation waste and wilde/…

A dock docked. Photo by Eric Gonzalez/Unsplash Nano has made a joke out of Bengal – a cruel, real, practical joke. The entire world was waiting keenly to see if nano comes out of the greenfield venture in Singur. And we know, well almost, that it won’t. Where it goes from here is secondary. But one thing is for sure. As the factory moves out in small parcels out of Singur, it takes away with it hope; that…