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Nov 28, 2024 | 
thehindu.com | Prabhat Patnaik
Professor Amiya Kumar Bagchi, who passed away on Thursday (November 28, 2024) evening, was one of the most outstanding economists, scholars, and public intellectuals of our time. A rebel all his life, he left the college where he had been admitted originally for speaking out against some injustice, and joined Presidency College, Kolkata, which had a freer atmosphere.
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May 18, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
On April 16, the latest Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination results were published. It was a reason to celebrate for Rau’s IAS Study Circle, which found 281 of its students clearing the examination, with nine of the top 20 students, as well as the topper, Aditya Srivastava, being its alumni. Rau’s IAS Study Circle has a long, fruitful history. Founded in 1953 by Dr S.
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May 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | V. Venkatesan |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
On May 14, a two-Judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justices M.M. Sundresh and S.V.N. Bhatti, vacated the stay on the Bombay High Court’s December 2023 order granting bail to human rights activist and journalist, Gautam Navlakha, an accused in Bhima Koregaon case. The bench cited the detailed High Court order and the fact that there are 375 witnesses in the case, which is likely to inordinately delay the trial, as the reasons for lifting the stay.
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May 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
For more than 25 years, developing countries and indigenous peoples have been pushing for intellectual property (IP) laws that better protect their local flora, fauna, traditional knowledge, and culture from exploitation by outside parties. In recent years, calls have grown louder for greater accountability from companies that use foreign countries’ or indigenous cultures’ traditional knowledge or cultural heritage.
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May 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Neera Chandhoke |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
India has completed three phases—at the time of writing—of an incredibly complex seven-phase polling that began on April 19 and will end on June 1. In India, elections are celebrated with great gusto, as veritable carnivals that applaud popular sovereignty. The importance of elections as the keystone of democracy is apparent and needs no justification.
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May 14, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
Cabbage must be the most deeply loathed vegetable on the planet. Condemned as vapid and tasteless, it is the acknowledged saboteur of a home-cooked meal. Bought for bulk and plonked on the kitchen counter with an air of atavistic triumph, it is a leafy cranium, freshly harvested off the enemy. Caboche meant head in Old English. Yet it is dismissed as a vegetable of very small brain. Cute, but practically ineducable. No matter how craftily seduced, it will not be beguiled out of cabbageness.
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May 14, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
As I think of Surjit Patar, this following verse, which I had first heard on radio during my college days, reverberates in my mind: Je ayi pathjhar taa fer ki hai tu agli rutt ch yakeen rakhin, main labh ke lyona kalma kito Tu fullan jogi jameen rakhin… (Never mind even if autumn descends, maintain faith in the forthcoming season; I’ll seek out and bring a scion for you, (till then) safeguard a piece of land as small as a flower) In February 2022, I called the poet from Chandigarh to request...
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May 12, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ismat Ara |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
In the early hours of March 23, Muslim residents of Maulaganj Mohalla in Darbhanga’s Laheriasarai woke up to a troubling sight: saffron “Hindu Rashtra” flags planted across the street outside Muslim homes and the local mosque. Maulaganj and Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods nearby, such as Rehemganj, Purani Munsafi, and Khan Chowk, were shaken by this incident ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
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May 12, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Anand Mishra |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
Congress flags flutter on roadside shops and houses in Diwatia village, part of the Bhojpur Assembly segment of Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency, and one imagines it is an indication of the area warming up to the party, but minutes later the scene changes. Villagers gossiping or taking a siesta suddenly don saffron caps and scarfs with the BJP’s symbol and name and rouse themselves to welcome Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former Chief Minister, who is the BJP candidate from Vidisha.
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May 11, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay |Prabhat Patnaik |Vaishna Roy
The issue of corruption was never a deciding factor in West Bengal’s electoral politics. The Saradha scam and the Narada sting revelations, which surfaced weeks ahead of the 2016 Assembly election, could not stop the Trinamool Congress from returning to power with a thumping majority. Again in 2021, the party returned to power, with its highest ever tally of 215 seats, amid allegations of coal and cattle smuggling, ration scam, and cut money taken from funds for government projects.
