-The Hindustan Times West Bengal's Dum Dum Central Jail could put the notorious Abu Ghraib in a shade going by some of the disturbing incidents which have taken place there recently. A mere request for better food earned Bikram Mahato, undergoing trial for murder, a severe beating after which he was handcuffed and kept naked in a cell. And this is not an isolated incident in this jail. When Mahato had...

-The Hindustan Times The Mamata Banerjee led administration came under fire yet again after a review committee of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) issued a ‘refusal of certificate’ to a film Kangal Malsat for being critical of the Trinamool government and Mamata Banerjee led movements. “The way the departure of Tata Company was shown in the film it seemed to malign or at least look down upon a significant...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Mamata Banerjee was staring at her darkest night in power after the chief minister shunted out police commissioner R.K. Pachnanda for ignoring the ruling party’s diktats and earned a damning rebuke from the governor. A crackdown that netted several Trinamul supporters and brought the police within striking distance of bigger fish during investigations into the murder of sub-inspector Tapas Chowdhury was said to be the immediate trigger for the...

-Counterpunch.org     “The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”     BR Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943, Delhi. I. Arrest. States are clumsy with their enormous power. When it suits the modern state, it uses it immense apparatus to constraint those who make claims upon it or who say things that denigrate this or that section of society. A college professor in West Bengal draws a cartoon of...

-The Times of India Sociologist Ashis Nandy's controversial words at the Jaipur lit fest are being debated heatedly but there is one thing that is difficult to argue with: there is a lack of representation from the backward classes and tribals in the upper echelons of power in West Bengal. Over the last 100 years, he said, "nobody from the other backward classes (OBCs), the backward classes, the scheduled castes and...