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Communist Party of India has issued countywide call to stage a massive demonstration at Ramleela grounds on September first this year against the indifferent attitude of the ruling NDA government towards people’s growing miseries. While hunger graph shows the contradiction that India is one of the largest food producing countries, yet so far as consumption is concerned, we stand at 102 among 117 qualifying countries, worse than the neighbouring countries. According to statistics, the food scenario had been already poor even before COVID pandemic. COVID had its own share in the rising impoverishment and already had singularly affected the employment possibilities. Adding salt to the livid wounds, the malnourished generation has its own effects that may damage the future also, thus offering no hope.

KOLKATA: July is the cruellest month for film lovers in Bengal. Many away from the state mourn this day as their favourite matinee idol Uttam Kumar journeyed to the land of sleep on July 24, 1980. He had become a screen icon portraying some of the best characteristics of Bengali manhood. If it was the dutiful elder brother in Basu Paribar, an upper class youth who has an equal mix of an adventurous streak and chivalry in Jhinder Bandi, a man with a golden heart who frequents houses of ill fame in Nishipadma and befriends a motherless child there, a romantic lover in Share Chuattor, a top bracket freedom fighter in Sabyasachi, a sleuth in Chiriakhana.

LONDON: One headline sums up the contradiction at the heart of Andy Burnham’s new premiership. It appeared in The Guardian and read: “Streeting says Burnham government will prioritise military over other spending.”

Forty-six years ago, I participated in the "Job or Jail" campaign organized by the All India Students' Federation (AISF). Those memories returned with remarkable clarity on Sunday, July 19, when I spent nearly four hours with students at the AISF stall at Jantar Mantar, where four students were on a hunger strike.

Washington and Riyadh have signed a civilian nuclear cooperation pact that could let Saudi Arabia enrich uranium on its own soil. Announced this week and now headed to Congress, the deal marks a historic shift in US nonproliferation policy, alarms Israel and threatens to reshape the regional balance of power just as the US and Iran remain locked in confrontation.

Delhi Police had to resort to firing tear gas on protesters near CJP protest sites at Jantar Mantar to push them back late on Wednesday evening, where tens of thousands of them had gathered and still swelling. On Thursday July 23 morning, CJP protesters at Jantar Mantar had intensified their protest even more by demanding “Dharmendra Pradhan Must Resign”, responding to the violence unleashed against them and to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement on social media platform X, while evading statement in the Parliament when it is in session, that fast-track courts would be set up to prosecute the culprits behind the exam paper leaks.

History rarely announces political turning points when they occur. They often masquerade as administrative failures. A bread shortage becomes the French Revolution. A tax on tea becomes the American Revolution. A fruit vendor's self-immolation ignites the Arab Spring. India may one day discover that its political inflection point did not begin with an election, an economic crisis or even communal unrest. It began with a leaked examination paper.

There are moments in history when time scampers. Many Indians who were in a dilemma over the lack of collective rage would now be relieved. With developments over the manner in which the executive, the legislature and eventually even the judiciary appeared to converge, it was almost a replay of the British colonial rule. The freedom struggle, the sacrifices and the democratic secular Constitution, all appeared to be under major strain. July 20 was the day when a protest and Parliament march call was given by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), but actually it became a confluence of both streams of organised and spontaneous student action that stunned the nation.

KOLKATA: Competing for attendance of followers, three rallies held on July 21, the Martyr's Day sprang surprises for the organisers. Notwithstanding desertion, internal squabbles coupled with snowballing of corruption charges, the Trinamool Congress rally led by former chief minister Mamata Banerjee near Birla Planetarium drew the largest crowd putting in the shade the meeting organised by rebel faction led by Ritabrata Banerjee.

The New Pope, a sequel to the Young Pope, is streaming on Netflix, I sat down to watch and realised from its sharp, elevated and intellectual screen play, the serial was not about the Pope or the Catholic church, but more about the world we live in today dominated by the likes of Trump who assert their military and political power over the world and also within America.