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It is certainly not a happy situation as the courts are seen increasingly overstepping the boundaries between the Executive and Judiciary to the extent that there is probably need to redefine the relationship. The debate on whether the courts are right or wrong in what they are doing can go on, but the sad fact is that the situation is the result of a void that has been created by the utter failure of the government, and at times a criminal abdication of responsibility on the part of the government. We have had situations when faced with no help forthcoming from the government, even hospitals had to approach the courts for vital supplies of oxygen and medicines and the courts obliged. Otherwise, we would have seen even a greater tragedy. This is not to say that the tragedy that Indians have endured was any less severe.

The Indian filmmaking legend Satyajit Ray stepped into his 100th year on May 2, 2021. The maestro died in 1992, at the age of only 71. He left us without finishing many of the proposed film and writing projects which he had undertaken in his last years. Bengal lost not just a great filmmaker, but also a writer of extraordinary calibre, who opened up the Bengali children and adults to a new world of adventure and science fiction in their mother tongue.

New Delhi: Shiv Thapa, Sanjeet and Tokyo-bound Simranjit Kaur alongside two others booked semi-final berths as Indian pugilists assured themselves of 12 medals at the ASBC Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai.

Failure of leadership, failure of democratic governance, total failure of public institutions, failure of judiciary, concentration of power in one man, failure of collective responsibility of the Union Ministers with all of them having been reduced as sycophants to their leader always singingpaean to him, gross mismanagement of the Covid-19, failed lockdown 2020, leaving people in the lurch to fend for themselves to die uncared for lack of oxygen, shortages of hospital beds, shortages of medicines, non-availability of ambulances, their black marketing, allowing patients to collapseon pavements of hospitals, on roads, in vehicles, in homes, indignity in deaths, floating of corpses in the Ganga, burying loved ones in shallow sandy ditches along the rivers, such dead bodies surfacing and being eaten by carnivorous animals, serpentine queue of people at funerals, burial sites, suppression of data on number of deaths especially in BJP ruled states, denial of facts, massive losses of jobs and livelihoods, allowing police and other law enforcement agencies to run berserk against people that includes opposition, arbitrary exercise of power with elements of shocks, awe, surprises, without forethought, without pre-planning, without pre-consultations, without consensus, ensuring speedy march to making India a majoritarian Hindu Rashtra, castration of the Constitution without formal amendments, emasculation of the Election Commission into a subordinate department, preference for unwarranted Central Vista redevelopment on a war footing over lives of the grieving people and at the top of all such mess ups, all out efforts to spread positivity amidst all around darkness, as never before, to protect the leader as one above the board mark the culmination of the second year of the second term of the NDA Union Government on May 30, 2021, in all, the last seven years.

New Delhi: India’s Mohammad Hussamuddin crashed out as he lost to the world champion and top-seed Mirazizbek Mirzahalilov in the 56kg quarter-finals at the SBC Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai on Tuesday.

Bam Ganatantrik Jote (Left Democratic) front comprising Bangladesh Samajtontri Dal, Communist Party of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Samajtontri Dal Marxvadi, United Communist League of Bangladesh, Samajtontri Andolan and Ganatantric Biplabi Dal in a joint statement demanded that the criminal case against the leading Bengali morninger Prothom Alo senior reporter Rozina Islam be withdrawn unconditionally. The forty-two year-old reporter was arrested nearly a week ago, was released from women’s cell of prison of Kashimpur Central prison in Dhaka on Sunday after a Dhaka court had granted her bail. The Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Baki Billah granted the bail upon a bond of Tk5,000 and submission of her . The interim bail was granted till 15 July.

LUCKNOW: BJP is busy with damage control following the drubbing it received in the recently held panchayat polls. There have several meetings of the party’s central leadership with the state leaders to chalk out a strategy to improve the image of the party and the government to face the assembly polls early next year.

Did you know that most Covid-19 deaths take place in the hours between midnight and dawn, extending up to when a new workday begins with a change of doctors and nurses and other hospital staff? Late in the night hospitals and patients are left to the care of junior doctors, including PG students, who have little or no powers to take critical decisions required to save the lives of the critically ill at their life's end. Hence the relatively more deaths in the hours after midnight, the “doldrums of the day.”

The catastrophic damage caused by the COVID pandemic has put every person on physical and mental strain. Several families have lost their members. Losing kith and kin leads to the biggest stress on one’s mind. No person unless totally emotionless can avoid crying with sorrow and pain of others. The process began from the abruptly announced lockdown one year back without consulting anyone or considering the damage to the jobs and livelihood it would cause. The number of people in reverse migration was beyond imagination. People walked on foot, bicycles, rickshaws, autos or any other means they could get. They were herded in the vehicles on exorbitant charges like the animals are carried by the butchers. It is not easy to forget the video of a two years baby whose mother had died on the railway station and the baby was covering her with sheet. The scene was not less heart-rending than the photo of a Syrian child dead at sea shore or the picture of a vulture waiting for the child to die so that it could eat the dead baby during civil war in Somalia. None in the government at the Centre was moved by such events albeit the Prime Minster termed the sufferings of the working people as ‘Tapasya’. It is an addition to the vocabulary that sufferings caused due to some other person’s acts are Tapasya.

Even as the post-poll violence and vendetta politics continue in West Bengal, one more flashpoint has emerged between the Centre and the state with chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet deciding to revive the Legislative Council last week. Revival of the second chamber is one of Mamata’s campaign promises. Banerjee had said that eminent people and veteran leaders who were not nominated for the assembly elections would be made members of the Vidhan Parishad. In other words, she wants some more leeway for her patronage.