I had walked at the Nandigram rally. I walked again on this issue — twice, yesterday and today (Tuesday and Wednesday). The students approached me for their rally yesterday and today I was approached by members of JUTA, of which I am not a member. But since my own principles are involved, I did not hesitate to take a stand and join the rally. All of us have felt very deeply worried...

One tweet that had many cracking up was: “Dear Mamata, normally the cartoonist tries to capture the subject. Not vice versa.” The allegation was that Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra has used email id of his neighbour Subrata Sengupta (70) to forward an e-mail containing a graphic with a humorous reference to Mamata Banerjee for replacing Dinesh Trivedi with Mukul Roy as Railway Minister. The graphic uses photographs of the three Trinamool...

There is nothing more frightening than being frightened. Fear takes away the powers of rational thinking. It makes one pause before one performs acts that were previously considered routine. Does one forward an email containing a cartoon or a joke about a political leader who holds the most important job in the state of West Bengal? As a journalist, does one dare to write an article that is critical of...

On March 15, 2011, when the Mamata Banerjee wave was at its zenith, thespians Saonli Mitra and Arpita Ghosh went to Bansberia in Hooghly to stage the anti-establishment play 'Poshu Khamar', based on George Orwell's Animal Farm. But they were turned back by local CPM MP Rupchand Pal, who feared that the play was meant to denigrate the then ruling Left Front. The public outrage against CPM's "social hegemony" was...

Court settles the class issue, but the real challenges of RTE have to be met The debate over the Right to Education is beginning to display characteristic symptoms of Indian debates. Elites are inventing specious arguments to condone the economic apartheid in the current system. But India’s self-appointed anti-elites are often even more elitist. They are more fixated on taking down elites a peg or two rather than intelligently fixing real...