May Day is a paid holiday in Calcutta — and in West Bengal. In the afternoon, unending processions of the labouring classes converge on the maidan ; they are entertained to passionate speeches by the...
A Calcutta Diary
The dialectics of ensuring home employment vis-à-vis outsourcing for higher profits is very much joined. Outsourcing is bad for the working class at both ends of the spectrum - in the developed as...
The Indian oligarchs have taken care of themselves. They are already integrated nationally. The next milestone is transit to international integration. But while our elites integrate with the rest of...
The United States is a trapped elephant; it evokes, with every day, a little less fear and a little more contempt. Its capacity to dispense favours is markedly getting depleted.
Irrespective of whether one applies the criterion of parliamentary or extra-parliamentary influence, Marxists and not revanchists of the Togadia-Singhal brand reflect the overwhelming vox populi in...
As economic circumstances worsen, ordinary people come under intense pressure. They have to ventilate their ire and anguish, they have no alternative but to march and organise meetings. They must...
Whether joining this side or that, we are a community of murderers. Those belonging to our team are described as heads of states; those lined up against us are a dirty bunch of despicable killers...
The political bosses would not like Kashmir to be dropped from the agenda. They have a vested interest in Kashmir, for they have a vested interest in defence and security outlays; commissions from...
The curse of the empire will not leave us. The curse of the empire has rendered existence in Calcutta into a mournful colonial experience. Much worse, it has kept in bondage scholars and scholastic...
If the law pinches, just abolish the law. Indian politicians are about to do just that. Legislation is on the anvil to abolish the nasty provision requiring that those wanting to get elected to the...
It is not that Subhas Mukhopadhyay did not receive enough of prizes and rewards when he was a card-carrying communist. He was a household name in Bengali left households, generations have been reared...
Unchanging India, and even the World Bank has now joined the troupe of excuse-mongers: India has been unable to reap the full advantages of liberalisation because of natural calamities that have...
Charged with hijacking a Thai Airways plane at Bangkok airport in November 1990 to highlight the Burmese nation's struggle against the ruling junta and shuttling ever since between New Delhi,...
The world is a great harlotland and the Indians jolly well have to play the role of strumpets. Should they behave to the contrary, they will be guilty not only of unfriendliness to the hyperpower but...
The eerie early hours of May 19, 1993. Five intruders, Kalashnikovs already blazing, barge into a two-room bit in a house on the eastern fringes of Calcutta and, no questions asked, summarily shoot,...
