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...

Evidence that poverty has declined since India began to liberalise in the 1980s, that the acceleration in growth to 8-9% range since the mid-2000s has resulted in accelerated poverty reduction and that these trends hold for each broad social group rather than just the aggregate population is as irrefutable as it gets in social sciences. In the accompanying graphic, taken from a recent study by Megha Mukim and the author, show...

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...

-IANS   Question: Why did Mamata Banerjee cross the road? Answer: To see if the chicken were making fun of her! In mid-April, the chief minister of West Bengal went viral with a vengeance. Hundreds of tweets (like the one above by @harqblack) carried the trendy #arrestmenow tag. Courting arrest got a new meaning. Now, Mamata is not the first to go viral. But such speed is usually found in other celebrity and entertainment domains. But...

There has been a veritable deluge of criticism of Mamata and the Trinamool on the arrest of a Jadavpur professor for circulating through email a gentle spoof on Mamata's sacking of the Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi.   From life imitating cartoons to Mamata suffering from certifiable paranoia – this has been the refrain in the mass Media. By this single act, Mamata and her regime have subjected themselves to far greater ridicule...