Society and Life

My chance meeting with PM Indira Gandhi at Charbatia military base as a kid It is worth recounting my experience of staying inside an army camp location when a full-fledged war broke out between India and Pakistan in December 1971. I…

He was an oddball in the Calcutta of 60s, teeming with anarchists, Trotskyites, Mao devotees and loonies believing in flat earth. The intellectual to population ratio was high even by the usual Bengali standards. Yet he stood out,…

Nineteenth century Odisha had a flourishing industrial base. The weaving of cotton cloths, silk, brass, metal, filigree & leather constituted the core of Orissa’s rural industry. Sadly, they had all vanished due to the wanton neglect…

Like the movie theater industry, very few businesses saw the losses during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Movie theaters took a severe hit with the shutdowns, ban, and hesitation over public gatherings. With that came the magnanimous rise of…

Simon de Beauvoir, the French philosopher wrote in her seminal book ‘The Second Sex’’ (1949): ‘You are not born a woman, you become one’, to underline the fact that gender distinction is the fundamental source of women’s oppression.,…

Several historic handshakes between arch political rivals have changed the world. Like the one between Ronald Regan and Gorbachov in 1985 that ended the ideological cold war between USSR & USA, disintegrating USSR by 1991. Or between…

In the book entitled, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988), Noam Chomsky brought out how mass communication media of the USA carries out a system of supportive propaganda function by relying on market forces…

It's disheartening, but not surprising, to learn that the dowry system still exists in modern India! As I write this, three dowry-related incidents have occurred in our country. Forget being harassed for a car; I've read situations…

"They're too young to be learning about gender!" When we bring up gender education for children, we are always informed that LQBTQIA+ campaigners and progressive educators are wrong. Beyond the binary, everything appears to be forbidden!…

When you look around yourself with an honest pair of eyes, you will realize how injured our country is. Men, women, and children are struggling for food, shelter, for clothes. They are struggling to live. Men are trying to feed their…