BJP

West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Footprints of United Coalition Era in India?

West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Footprints of United Coalition Era in India?

Written by : Pratip Chattopadhyay The assembly election of West Bengal in 2021 turned out to be a great deception for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its supporters. The Trinamul Congress (TMC), the ruling party recorded a thumping victory with 213 seats out of 292 seats in which polls were conducted. The result of the election came out as a replay of the Delhi assembly election last year. In the immediate post-election phase, we witnessed a spate of violence among the rival party members at the grass root level, then conundrum over arrest, re-arrest and finally bail of two…
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Silence Please! Developmental Democracy is Parading in India

Silence Please! Developmental Democracy is Parading in India

Written by : Pratip Chattopadhyay Photo : Shutterstock.com Summary: Democracy in India has seen many twists and turns in its evolution but under the present dispensation of Narendra Modi led NDA government, democracy in India has taken a distinct developmental turn, rhetorically in slogans like ‘development for all, development with all for trust of all’, and practically through reform measures in economic sector. As against the ‘swadeshi’ and ‘nationalist’ sentiment that BJP manifests, the present developmental turn is modelled on neoliberal paradigm of development. Quite naturally because of rootedness of Indians, farmers and commoners stages protest firmly against such developmental…
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Let’s Make History: Appropriating Histories to Make Newer Histories

Let’s Make History: Appropriating Histories to Make Newer Histories

Written by : Dr. Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Photo : Shutterstock.com Vexed Histories History writing, its interpretation, and conception of any event as history are markedly selective and involve ‘political’ choices and decisions. The methodology infused into the engagement and resource collection and documentation is strongly marked by familiarising and de-familiarising select events. Thereby the event is perceived through what Foucault calls a gaze. In many senses, the gaze of history which fills our knowledge/information for the common is marked by the statist enterprise (governance, governmentality). In short, history is a political engagement in many senses not merely because of the…
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Defecting Democracy: The New Normal of Party-politics in India

Defecting Democracy: The New Normal of Party-politics in India

Written by : Pratip Chattopadhyay Illustration : Avijit Ghosh Summary: Presently defection in party-politics is becoming the new norm to smoothen the rise of Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) in the era of second coming of one-party system in Indian democracy. Defection as a practice is as old as party system in a democracy. However the new normaility of defection in Indian context is that defection is not resulting in new party formation or apolitical position but resulting in joining the bandwagon of BJP-ism thereby distorting the very essence of democracy itself, i.e. pluralism. In this context, this article claims that Indian…
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Independent India? : Time For Introspection

Independent India? : Time For Introspection

Written by : Pooja Sharma Photo credit : Shutterstock.com India had travelled a long way before we finally achieved independence. British had conquered India following the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The East India Company then ruled a more substantial part of India. The East India company invaded India and made it a colony with the aim of profit-making and exploitation. The approach adopted by the British to rule India was ruthless and unregulated. However, the British India company got dissolved in 1874. The power went from company to Crown. Even though the Crown was based on utilitarian principles, it…
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Delhi Assembly Elections 2020 : Win of  Collective Conscience over Religious Jingoism

Delhi Assembly Elections 2020 : Win of Collective Conscience over Religious Jingoism

From director’s desk Written by : Jayanta Chakrabarty Illustration by : Suman Choudhury In the beginning of January 2014, I was in Delhi. Dhoom 3 was released in theatres a few days back and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had formed a minority government in a hung assembly with outside support of 8 legislative members of Indian National Congress, with Arvind Kejriwal as the Chief Minister. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was biting the dust instead of being the signal largest party with 31 elected members in an Assembly of 70 seats. It was a tumultuous political situation; it was…
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NRC, Citizenship Amendment Bill: Where did it start?

NRC, Citizenship Amendment Bill: Where did it start?

Written By: Pema Bhadra Guwahati, India Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com, Pema Bhadra They were the first to export Assam’s Eri and Muga silk. Late Radhakrishna Saraswati formed an SHG four generations back near Rangiya, Kamrup District. The special saree for the goddess Kamakhya used to be made by his exceptionally talented weavers and the saree was called ‘Saraswati saree’. The present generation of Saraswati family owns a couple of multistoried buildings and runs an Ayurvedic shop at Panbazar in Guwahati. Rai Bahadur (a title given to influential persons, aristocrats by British Raj) Kali Charan Sen was one of the founders of…
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Dynasty, the Ever-growing Trend in Indian Politics

Dynasty, the Ever-growing Trend in Indian Politics

Written By: Sankhadip Das Kolkata, India Illustration: Suman Choudhury Another general election is round the corner, and once again the same old discussion has started making rounds - The great Indian political dynasties. Despite being a flourishing democracy for the last seven decades, why politics in India, is more of a family business? Is it harmful to the economy and development? Should it at all exist? These questions have become more pertinent now, or you may say as the Lok Sabha election looms large, the ruling party at the centre is stirring these issues to surface. The reason being that…
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Sabarimala and Triple Talaq: Two sides of the same patriarchy coin

Sabarimala and Triple Talaq: Two sides of the same patriarchy coin

Written By: Somrita Bhattacharyya Paris, France Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com The issue is about a biological process, a very normal one, comes every month. But it seems it has the power to shudder the socio-political system of a country known to be the largest democracy of the world! As we all know it already, the issue is not only a mere ‘men versus women’ issue. Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, please don’t play it wrong. When you say, ‘There are some temples in India, which have their own traditions, where men can’t go. And men don’t go…’ you miss a very crucial…
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Article 35A: Is it the root of all battles?

Article 35A: Is it the root of all battles?

Written by: Amitava Gupta Kolkata, India Photo Credit: Lydia Gaudin, Altaf Ahmad Budoo It does not take much to understand why BJP is against Article 35A in Kashmir, which was added to India's Constitution through a Presidential order in 1954. This article gives the state legislature of Jammu & Kashmir the discretionary power of defining permanent residents of the state. None other than the permanent residents can acquire immovable property in the state, nor can 'outsiders' get government jobs or stake a claim in any government scholarship or other forms of aid. Put simply, Article 35A makes it difficult to…
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