Ujjwal K Chowdhury

The media has proclaimed the on-going elections for the five state assemblies of UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur as the semi-finals of India’s parliamentary polls in 2014. The polls, spread over close to two months, have assumed significance and the debate is on whether the political idiom this time around is a tad bit different than the past. ...

Two sets of tweets at the outset of the New Year: “A new morning, a new awakening, a prayer for good tidings today, wellness and peace, sense and sensibilities, and brightness,” — Amitabh Bachchan “Wishes for 2012: low inflation, Parliament works, end to corruption, no farmer suicides, decisive government, responsible opposition, Sachin’s hundredth 100, Bharat Ratna for Sreedharan, India beats China in Olympics … And ultimate wish: we all strive to become better human beings, less conflict, more compassion,” — Rajdeep Sardesai. And I posted this on my Facebook wall: Last day of the year! The year ahead globally is ...

The parallel of good boiling tea leaves to make tasty tea with the boiling mood of the nation to create a new era complete with a transformed system, as illustrated in the Tata Tea Jaago Rey TVC, is both timely and absorbing. After the series of scams hit the UPA II coupled with irritants like inflation, popular mood has been seething with anger for a while. Anna Hazare-led India against Corruption campaign galvanized people further. ...

“Economics is a mere skeleton, unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and little human warmth in it” — Charles Dickens. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement took over Zuccotti Park in New York on September 17 and since then has spread to some 200 cities in 83 nations. OWS’s Facebook page says 20,000 protesters are in attendance at the Big Apple. In contrast, the Facebook page of Occupy Dalal Street has only 38 members along with an out-of-place Che Guevera photo in the background, a divorce from Indian ground realities. ...

India’s Planning Commission has come out with ludicrous figure of Rs 32 a day (less than a US dollar) as the poverty-line for urban Indians, and yet lower Rs 26 a day for their rural counterparts. With a nation having 8% plus GDP growth (though largely jobless growth) — second highest rate after China in the world, and a per capita income of above Rs 130 a day (less than US 3$) what wisdom made to zero in on these ridiculous figures can at best be answered by the architects of the poverty line. ...

UPA-II that boasts of the second highest GDP growth rate and fourth largest economy at its disposal stands stripped to its bones by a five-feet nothing 74-year-old man, who does not have a bank account, sleeps in a temple, eats frugally twice a day and fights corruption with ahimsa. August 15: Thumbs up to freedom from fear, ignorance, stereotypes, laziness, depression, violence and corruption. Happy Independence Day to all. Please switch off lights at 8pm on August 15 as a mark of protest against the non-inclusion of the Prime Minister, judiciary and lower bureaucracy from the Jan Lokpal bill and ...

Author Nirad C Chaudhuri dedicated his ‘ The Autobiography if an Unknown Indian’ to “the memory of the British Empire in India…/ Because all that was good and living within us/ Was made, shaped and quickened/ By the same British rule”. Nothing can be further from truth than this. The richest ‘nation’ (though the Western concept of nationhood was not there then), one of the strongest civilizations with five thousand years of history was plundered, ravaged; people’s confidence broken, history forgotten through five hundred years of wars, conflicts, slavery, etal. It is seen that civilizations, in a stage of decay, ...

Ahead of August 15, 2010, the 63rd independence day of India, what intrigues me is that while the or nation, personified by Goddess Bharti, was freed in 1947, and the economy, personified by say Goddess Lakshmi, has had the taste of liberalisation in 1991, when the shackles will be broken of education in this country, personified by Goddess Saraswati. Whither New Education Policy & Knowledge Commission? While the terms of the game in the world of education were planned to be changed when the new Education (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal took charge, there is little progress on ground. There were ...

Bengal is up for change. And that has been in the offing and due for long. No multi-party pluralist liberal democratic largely capitalist system can and should have the same ruling dispensation for such a long time. It has been more than three decades in the case inWest Bengal! It is a case-study by itself, indeed. But what we now need to debate is not whether the change is happening. That is written on the wall. The debate should be on what type of change, change to what new ruling dispensation, and to what short-term, mid-term and long-term impact. On ...

The Indian Premier League has been at the receiving end even as the glamorous version of 20:20 cricket in India, which has brought in Indian city-based but multinational cricketing teams play a much marketed series of matches, just turned three. Let us first look at the arguments that have been going around against it. Online critics have come out with a veritable list of arguments against IPL. First, cricket and Bollywood do not go well together. Shahrukh’s Knight Riders, Preity’s Punjab Kings XI, Shilpa Shetty’s later entry to Rajasthan Royals have all been doing very badly. Second, the purists of ...