On a day the Trinamool Congress celebrated the first anniversary of the announcement of the 2011 Assembly polls results, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Sunday that there has been an average of one farmer suicide every week since Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's government came to power in West Bengal. “Up to 2011 in States like West Bengal and Kerala there was no news of...
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Govt humours MPs, may ban all cartoons in school textbooks
-The Times of India Government on Monday appeared to be considering putting an end to the innovative use of cartoons to make school textbooks more appealing to students. Although a committee set up by the government to look into the use of cartoons is to submit its report on June 15, UPA appeared set to end the experiment altogether. "We believe textbooks are not the place where these issues (cartoons) should be...
More »Freedom of expression is contextual, says Kapil Sibal
-IANS Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal Monday said that freedom of expression is "contextual". His statement came even as members in the Lok Sabha once again united in criticising cartoons in NCERT textbooks, stating that these allegedly denigrated political leaders, especially the ones on B.R. Ambedkar. Sibal promised the Lok Sabha that all objectionable material would be removed and the role of advisors of NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and...
More »Hardly funny-R Akhileshwari
An illustration in a textbook must expand or add to the lesson; Shankar's cartoon of Ambedkar does neither The controversy kicked up over the withdrawal of a textbook for high school over a cartoon after a ruckus in Parliament has been superficially interpreted and uniformly criticised without understanding the sensitivities of the oppressed for whom B.R. Ambedkar is a hero. The anger of Dalits is being interpreted as intolerance while in...
More »Moratorium on Bt Brinjal-D Bandyopadhyay
On February 9, 2010, the then Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on the introduction of Bt Brinjal in India. It is necessary and desirable to quote the order verbatim. It reads as follows: It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjals till such time independent scientific studies establish, to...
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