Debaroopa Bhattacharyya

BATTLE FOR BENGAL: A REPORT ON FIRST FOUR PHASES OF ELECTIONS

April 20, 2021

As a short spring metamorphoses into the mighty summer, West Bengal’s air is warming up to the potent political currents and cross-currents that promise to drive the windmills of change this electoral season. The Assembly elections have kicked off with a bang in the state and unfolded in a mosaic...

FROM A MARGINAL PLAYER TO THE CUSP OF POWER: BJP’S BIG RISE IN BENGAL

March 3, 2021

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contested the West Bengal Assembly election for the first time in 1982. The primary objective of the party was to create a nucleus for a future third force in West Bengal politics. The party contested 52 Assembly constituencies and got around 1,29,994 votes in the...

WHY HOLDING A VIOLENCE-FREE POLL IN BENGAL IS A HERCULEAN TASK

January 29, 2021

On the way to Diamond Harbour from Kolkata last month, BJP president J.P. Nadda’s convoy was attacked allegedly by Trinamool Congress goons. Stone-pelting and open fights followed soon after. While it made the national headlines, Bengalis dismissed it as a routine pre-election skirmish. That does not come as a surprise...

Corporatisation and education: Are children turning into robots?

December 23, 2020

In the two decades of my teaching and consultation career, whenever I have counselled parents or conducted seminars and workshops with them, I have invariably begun with: “Where do you see your children ten years from now?” And I have always been bombarded with answers containing this one very loaded...

A CASE FOR IMPLEMENTING CAA AND NRC IN BESIEGED ASSAM

November 5, 2020

Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own house? Treated like an alien in your own homeland? Seems like an impossible proposition, but ask any native of Assam and he will cite several instances when he felt homeless in his own land. The larger Indian psyche, often out...

Time to shatter the glass ceilings in our minds

October 23, 2020

Do glass ceilings exist only in professional spaces? Look around and think again! Glass ceilings exist everywhere: In professional, social, emotional, physical and material contexts as constructs to subvert female views and ideas, needs and desires, egos and identities. We bring up our boys and girls in an all-pervasive misogynist...