A local court on Monday convicted Samajwadi Party state president and MLA Abu Asim Azmi and four others of making inflammatory speeches to incite communal violence during a rally in 2000. Metropolitan magistrate Sanjashree Gharat of the Mazgaon court sentenced Azmi, Waqarunnissa Ansari, Lalbahadur Singh, Ehsanullah Khan and Ali M Shamsi to two years' imprisonment. When the five sought time to appeal in the sessions court, the magistrate allowed suspension of...

-IANS The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left Wednesday demanded an explanation from the government on former Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom's revelations on the Bofors payoff scandal, including the safe passage to main accused Ottavio Quattrochchi. The BJP said it had always questioned the safe passage to Italian businessman Quattrochchi in the Rs.1,500 crore Bofors gun deal in the 1980s. "The entire government of late Rajiv Gandhi was out to secure...

A moratorium is not the magic bullet that can slay Bengal’s fiscal demons, several economists have said, pointing out that postponing the inevitable will be of little use unless backed up by a revenue mobilisation road map. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had yesterday set a 15-day deadline for the Centre to announce a three-year moratorium on the payment of interest on the loans Bengal had taken. “A moratorium on repayment obligations can...

Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...

-The Economist West Bengal’s populist chief minister is doing badly. Yet she typifies shifts in power in India BUYER’S remorse is common enough in the dusty markets of Kolkata, a delightful if crumbling great city, once known as Calcutta and still capital of the state of West Bengal. Those who buy cheap plastic goods or plaster-of-Paris busts of Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal’s cultural hero, may come to regret their haste. Likewise, many who...