Samrat Choudhury
Stadium saga: Why the notion of ‘punishment posting’ to North East, Ladakh is an ill-advised, ludicrous idea
The Indian bureaucracy needs to examine its own prejudices that shape ideas of what constitutes a punishment posting. The very notion ought to be put where it belongs, which is the dustbin of history
Why political mad rush to join BJP may not guarantee the saffron party a victory in Manipur polls
The ruling party starts the 2022 Manipur elections from a position of great apparent strength. But the appearance can hide some hard realities
UK's Freedom Day plans underscore stark choices posed by reality of COVID-19 world
There is a growing realisation around the world that the COVID virus cannot be eradicated. It is here to stay, and we will have to learn to live, or die, with it.
Amid pandemic-induced cancellation of board exams, lack of standardised evaluation poses challenges for students
The aim of education is not a certificate, or marks in an exam. Education is an end in itself, not a means to an end.
Tradition vs modernity conflict in India is an expression of past pushing back against present to reclaim primacy, dominance
The traditionalist worldview comes with a rich garnishing of nostalgia.
Manoranjan Byapari: At 70, the rickshaw-wallah turned feted writer and MLA, is looking to the future rather than the past
In the recently-held West Bengal assembly polls, Byapari’s remarkable story took another twist.
Media's failure in contending with second COVID-19 wave has left Indians paying the price
The systemic lapses that exacerbated the scale of the second COVID-19 wave would arguably not have happened in a country with a freer media that was doing the job it is meant to do.
In grip of a vicious second wave, India needs to confront more than just the virus
Our society and country is going backwards, to great cheering and flag-waving.
The real business of politics: Parties are united by one ideology — maximising profit, maintaining systems of power
The politicians are only the stars of the election movies in which voters are the audience and party workers, the extras. The real power, ultimately, resides with those who decide which star and which script to back: the financiers.
The absurdity of conservatism: How enforcement of 'culture' is at odds with nation's real heritage and development
What we are witnessing now, in the form of enforcement of taboos of food, and the push against what is called “love jihad”, is an assertion of power by those who wish to conserve the old ways.
West Bengal polls: BJP, Muslim-led parties hope to unseat TMC as religious polarisation gains ground
Bengal is not like any other state of India when it comes to Hindu-Muslim politics. Both Hindu and Muslim religious politics have deep roots here, going back to the first Partition of Bengal in 1905.
The Hindutva ideal of Akhand Bharat has held firm but its spatial, chronological extents remain hazy
Hindu nationalists view the 1947 Partition of India as only the most recent in a long series of divisions of the territory of ancient Bharat. For them, the territorial concept, drawn from ancient Hindu texts, is that the entire landmass between the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas is Bharat.
After military seizes power in Myanmar, a fresh spell of uncertainty awaits Northeast India and its neighbours
The histories of Burma, Northeast India and Bangladesh have always been intertwined.
What 'populist' means: There's more to the label, associated with leaders like Donald Trump, than meets the eye
Perhaps one reason that the word “populist” becomes useless is because it describes a wide variety of political actors, spanning the ideological spectrum.
Our Hindu Rashtra review: In new book, Aakar Patel charts India's descent into a majoritarian nation
Comparing India’s case to Pakistan’s, it becomes clear that the mainstreaming of religious politics is having the same kind of effect here that Pakistan has already undergone.
Of bans, blasphemy laws and politically correct language: Meanings of words are not solely contained in themselves
A blasphemy law proscribing a certain word may raise awareness that a certain public behavior is socially unacceptable, but it cannot do very much more if the underlying attitudes have social acceptability.
2020, the year of conspiracy theories: As COVID-19 gripped the world, so did the desire for easy answers
Conspiracy theories offer simple, understandable explanations of events and help us regain a belief in human control over situations.
Damming Brahmaputra: With mega-dam plans, China might end up hurting itself more than India
The true idea of a river is not of a single stream of water between two banks, but a nervous system of watery arteries and capillaries that form the circulatory system of a living ecosystem in a particular river basin.
Why anti-migrant rhetoric is all bluster, no action: Nudge and wink policy allows politicians, businessmen to reap benefits
For all the Right-wing anti-migrant rhetoric now popular in many parts of the world, economic imperatives are powering migration flows that no amount of rule-making or wall-building can prevent.
2020 US Presidential Election is a referendum not only on Donald Trump, but also on his style of populist politics
It is obvious from the support for Donald Trump’s re-election bid that facts, logic and administrative acumen or its lack don’t count for much with angry people. Emotions do.