Lone crusader warns school-goers against substance abuse
Moved by a personal tragedy, young Bengali engineer-turned-actor Bobby Chakraborty has launched a singular campaign to educate schoolchildren
about the impact of alcohol and other addiction and deter them from the path.
Shoma A Chatterji
brings us his story.
Female and fearful In Mamata’s Bengal
Character assassination, social and economic ostracisation and even assault, seem to have become the standard responses to all who protest against the culture of violence against women in West Bengal.
Shikha Mukerjee
reports on the ground realities in the state.
Shielding campuses from violence
Violence during college union elections, the death of a protesting 22-year-old student in police custody and a resultant chain of events have led to earnest debates in West Bengal over whether students should stay away from active politics.
Promona Sengupta
explores the reality underlying prevailing sentiments.
Industrial Tribunal verdict raises hope
Eleven years after journalist Rina Mukherjee was fired following her allegations of sexual harassment
against a senior, the West Bengal Industrial Tribunal passes an order against The Statesman, offering hope of redress for other victims.
Navya P K
reports.
Back to the family
Grounded in its feminist views, Praajak works with runaway boys and young men, to give them livelihood options and help them
reunite with their families.
Shoma Chatterji
reports.
Children impacted by forced evictions
Motivated by the media attention in Nandigram, six volunteers of Child Rights and You decided to examine how the urban poor are faring
against State-sponsored eviction.
Shoma Chatterji
reports.
Trapped from all sides
Young women and girls in red light areas face extreme levels of desperation, stemming partly from poverty, but also because
of sheer physical exploitation, even by husbands and fathers.
Ruchi Choudhary
reports.
Hidden behind a modest restaurant, decades of worth
Over the years, several thousands have made their way to this Kolkata eatery to feast on authentic local food. It's the star feather in the All Bengal Women's Union's cap.
Aditi Bhaduri
has more.
Boxing their way forward
At the crux of Ekbalpur's women boxers' passion lies a sense of liberation and recognition that they do not get from anything else.
Sudhiti Naskar
reports.
Lalgarh: Deprived of a peace of life
Not many trace their way back to the human tragedy that has given rise to the culture of violence
that marks Lalgarh today. The women do not appear scared of any police reaction in response to their
protests.
Soma Mitra
has more.
Calcutta HC steps in against corporal punishment
A division bench passed a series of orders last month while hearing a public interest litigation
alleging that the West Bengal government had failed to enforce the ban against violence on children in schools.
Shoma Chatterji
reports.
Children in the crossfire
A CRY report from Nandigram finds that children's experience of the violence there is intensely personal. Their vocabulary now includes
words like shilpo, santrash and proshashon.
Shoma Chatterji
reports.
Islamic elegies for social justice
The rural Muslim women of
Murshidabad district in West Bengal have
circumvented religious curbs and successfully
used a prevalent
religious tradition to eke out a living as well as create
social
awareness.
Ajitha Menon
has more.
A creeping insularity
At Santiniketan, Tagore's presence still inhabits many buildings; the keepers of which buildings are often knowledgeable about his legacy. But the
place needs to be de-parochialised to make it once more inclusively Indian, writes
Ramachandra Guha.
Of daughter, father and river
Samir Chanda's Ek Nodir Galpo, which premiered in Kolkata in November 2007, offers the moving experience of a father who
makes it his mission to name a river after his dead daughter. His struggle evolves into his way of reinventing his daughter.
Shoma Chatterji
has more.
Selectively virtuous
They protest when the BJP or Shiv Sena bans a book or intimidates an artist, should they not do likewise when the CPI(M) does likewise?
The Taslima Nasreen case has tested, and will test, the integrity of the Left intelligentsia even more than Nandigram, says
Ramachandra Guha.
Fighting eve-teasing: rights and remedy
Irrespective of the dress they wear, or, their ages, their looks,
their educational, professional and marital status, never mind the time or
place, women in Kolkata and elsewhere are being subjected to all kinds of
harassment, including eve-teasing.
Shoma Chatterji
peels the layers and exposes myths.
Tales of eviction in Bengal
Free Bird Productions, a Kolkata-based documentary unit that makes cultural, ethnographic and documentary films, has made two of the more noteworthy
films about the recent events in Singur and Nandigram.
Shoma Chatterji
notes the unanswered questions the films raise.
Nandigram, an atrocity on dalits
The hypocrisy with which the Government of West Bengal acted at Nandigram this March
is a serious cause of disillusionment and has opened the door to further radicalisation
of the dispossessed.
Tanveer Kazi
presents the dalit perspective, even as the High Court continues to pass strictures on
the state government.
Parenthood sans prejudices
Maternity leave is generally not available to adoptive mothers in India,
even though an adoptive mother needs it just as much as
a biological mother. The central government recently passed an order
reversing this situation in part, thanks to Atmaja, an association of
adoptive parents in Kolkata.
Ranjita Biswas
reports.
Summer in Kolkata
Branded as insipidly traditional and rather reluctant to keep up with the up-country changing currents, Kolkata has let itself be swept by a few Bollywood blockbusters. Summer holiday camps for kids and teenagers have taken the city by storm. Children are changing too, reports
Kasturi Basu.
The needs of today, hopes of tomorrow
There is a surprising hope in the most despairing places. It isn't often
that many of us see this, but when we do, we are struck by the determination with which enormous deprivation is
tackled by real heroes.
Somnath Mukherji encounters the work of
Tomorrow's Foundation
in Kalighat, West Bengal.
Gender - a Left priority
While land reforms and decentralisation in West Bengal have been
successful, far less has been achieved in tackling gender disparities and
discrimination, says
Jayati Ghosh.
Rainbow children : dissolving differences
Since 1979, this Kolkata school has pioneered an educational process where
kids from different economic and social sections of society study, play and
share together as equals.
The Railway Women
West Bengal's rail hawkers are women of sheer grit and palpable passion says
Sharmistha Choudhury.
Natural farmers of Punjab
During the last four to five years, the soil in several parts of Punjab has been regenerated and rejuvenated. Natural farmers are convinced it is working. The movement is led by experienced farmers who believe in Guru Nanak's tenet of Sarbat da bhala (well being of all).
Umendra Dutt
writes about the transformative work hundreds of farmers are doing.
Poison in their veins
Researchers at the New Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment have found alarmingly high levels of pesticides in blood samples of villagers in Punjab, the showpiece state of India's green revolution. India needs to urgently take a tough look at the indiscriminate and careless use of pesticides, writes
Ramesh Menon.
Unsafe custody in Punjab's prisons
An INASAF investigation finds the state
grossly indifferent to the
health, medical needs, and humane treatment of
its prisoners, some of whom haven't even received trials.
Missing justice
The National Human Rights Commission should investigate
Punjab's forced disappearance, says
Human Rights Watch
Small hands, hard labour in Surat's textile industry
The famed textile industry of Surat is one of the pillars of Gujarat's industrial success story. What is less known about it is the unfortunate
reality of rampant child employment and exploitation that prevails there.
Shirish Khare
reports.
Child labour in Gujarat's cottonseed farms
Labour contractors and large landowners continue to employ children, often exposing them to vulnerable situations. Extreme poverty in Rajasthan's
tribal districts fuels the practice.
Pradeep Baisakh
reports.
Making ends meet
In the shadow of the Narmada dam, those displaced by the canal once hoped that its water would irrigate their fields. Little did they know
how their lives would turn out.
Neeta Deshpande
reports.
A legacy of loss
It is not only those whose villages have been submerged who have suffered, but
hundreds of families have lost land to the building of Sardar Sarovar itself.
Neeta Deshpande
reports.
Living on the edge
In the shadow of India's most controversial dam, men and women struggle to live with dignity. The first in a series on uprootment and survival in the
Narmada valley by
Neeta Deshpande.
Two new documentaries explode Gujarat's myths
Following his earlier acclaimed films, Rakesh Sharma has released two new Gujarati documentaries earlier this month. The films -- Sharma has even used RTI to collect government data -- expose unsavoury truths about farmers suicides as well as lower-caste rioters now in prison.
Shoma Chatterji
reports.
The POTA families of Godhra
The doors of homes in Rehmat Nagar, Godhra, are opened by children, and sometimes by women. Men
are rarely to be seen around. The world outside the settlement refers to them as "POTA families", a
description that encapsulates their precarious present and future.
Deepa A
has more.
Gujarat's textbooks: Full of biases and errors
An ongoing study of school textbooks in four states has found stereotypes and
biases in Gujarat's textbooks. The Social Studies textbook for standard five
has nine stories on mythology masquerading as history.
Deepa A
reports.
Segregated and building their own schools
The Gujarat state government appears to have very little planned by way of support for the education of Muslim children. What's more the education department appears to be standing in the way of the embattled community's attempts to help itself.
Deepa A
has more.
Whose Gujarat?
The violent assertiveness against Aamir Khan is part of a larger trend, marked by politicians who have
instilled the language with idioms of aggression. But as they mobilise to silence the 'other' voices in the Narmada
struggle, 'we' lose too, for it is
only a short step from here to gagging ourselves, says
Himanshu Upadhyaya.
Quake notes from the Rann
"Like thousands of other ordinary Indians I had rushed to Gujarat to lend a helping hand. And in the two weeks spent
there I got to see up close, many dimensions of our innate, if imperfect, humanity."
Venu Madhav Govindu
remembers a relief camp he called home five years ago.
Gender Revolution, after White Revolution
Traditionally, India's dairy cooperative societies have been run by men, but this is gradually changing. Today,
18% of cooperative members are women, and nearly 2500 all-women cooperatives are functioning in the country.
Sunanda Nehru Ganju
reports from Gujarat, where new livelihoods for women are being established this way.
Defying labels, defining themselves
The Budhan Theatre Group has become the nexus for a movement
to change attitudes towards denotified tribes both within
Ahmedabad's Chharanagar community and outside it.
Voices from a wounded land
For decades now the beautiful state of Manipur has been wracked by a violent insurgency and torn by the excesses of a draconian army. Anjali Nayar visits the state, bringing back poignant tales and the feeling of what it is like to live with fear.
Guns and widows
Raging violence across the state continues to take the lives of young men in Manipur. For the young widows left behind,
the struggle for survival is fraught with newly added responsibilities, for which many of them are ill-prepared.
Thingnam Anjulika Samom
reports.
Sex trade thrives in conflict-ridden Manipur
Acute poverty linked to armed conflict and displacement is a major reason for the growing number of commercial sex workers in Manipur. Drug abuse too is
common, further impacting those turning to the world's oldest profession.
Thingnam Anjulika Samom
reports.
Women in the line of fire
The rape of 21 women and girls has exposed deep-rooted ethnic divisions as well as fissures in Manipur's civil
society. As every tribe has rushed to arm itself, women find themselves embattled between warring groups, and
their bodies are the terrain the war is fought on.
Linda Chhakchhuak
reports.
A Kerala land struggle is 'settled', questions remain
Over 1400 families who had started living on the rubber plantation of Harrisons & Crossfields -- the Chengara struggle -- will now get land in a deal brokered by the Chief Minister in the presence of the Leader of the Opposition.
P N Venugopal
takes stock.
ASEAN FTA - a hasty, unbalanced deal
Since Kerala and ASEAN countries both produce several similar items, competition from the latter is a cause of worry in the former.
But the Centre has over-ridden the State's objections to the free trade agreement, writes
Bhaskar Goswami.
Kerala revises controversial school textbook
The K N Panikkar committee recommended a change in a controversial chapter of a social sciences textbook that triggered violent agitation on the grounds that it promoted atheism and communism.
P N Venugopal
has more.
School textbook issue spirals into political row
The new class VII social science textbook in Kerala has become the cause of clashes. Groups agitating against the book allege its content is anti-religion, while the state curriculum board says it propagates religious tolerance.
P N Venugopal
reports on the controversy.