Within weeks of coming to power for a third term, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has officially inaugurated the second phase of the West Bengal government’s ‘Krishak Bandhu’ scheme, intended as a boost to the state’s agricultural sector. On Thursday itself, several farmers received the stipulated
A recent letter stirred the hornet’s nest, not above the world’s highest peak, but down below in the world of mountaineering. Kalyan Chakraborty, Secretary of the Radhanath Sikdar Himalayan Museum, wrote a letter to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) Principal that said: ‘At the order
In the world’s largest democracy, gender equality is still a distant dream. A patriarchal mindset is still evident, and derogatory comments about women in politics are rife on social media, Sexist remarks are regularly directed at women who contest elections, whether about their appearance, clothing
Our world as we knew it changed drastically in January 2020, when Covid-19 made its global appearance. This may seem like stating the obvious, but life in Covid times has become so normalised that perhaps we need to step back a little occasionally, just so
With the BJP being confined to less than 1o0 seats in the recent Assembly elections, Mamata Banerjee’s stock has risen in the eyes of the nation, particularly among democratic-minded citizens. As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. The more inadequate the Congress proves in
On May 16, the day the Government of West Bengal announced a preliminary 15-day semi-lockdown, the number of new Covid-19 cases as reported by the Health & Family Welfare Department was 19,117. That brought the total number of active cases in the state up until
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnhAbvuSJio In 1925, a 27-year-old Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was arrested and sent to a British prison in Mandalay, Burma, there to remain for the next two years. At about the same time, back home in Kolkata, iconic Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay published his ‘Pather
When we say ‘family’, what do we usually mean? In our times, the answer is likely to be a unit of four or five people, comprising a married, heterosexual couple and their biological children, with the couple’s parents or in-laws in some cases. That’s a
Taking account of the spiralling Covid-19 situation, and in response to calls for a stricter lockdown from several quarters, the West Bengal government has announced a tightening of the partial lockdown in the state, extending it until May 30. The announcement was made by state
A total of 17 new faces, including former national cricketer Manoj Tiwary, are among the ministers in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s third-term cabinet, representing an interesting mix of old and new. With the addition of these 17 names, the strength of the cabinet now stands