Guwahati As part of a wider initiative to help member-journalists add value to their professional experience, Guwahati Press Club has begun to screen award winning and critically acclaimed films and documentaries every week. On Friday (11 May), the non-verbal documentary ‘Glass’ was screened at the GPC auditorium.
An Oscar-winning documentary made in 1958 by eminent European filmmaker Bert Haanstra, ‘Glass’ brilliantly contrasts glassblowing techniques used at the Royal Leerdam glass factory in Netherlands, with modern machines churning out glassware on industrial scale. The film captures the art of the glassblowers with great sensitivity, their marvelous craftsmanship imparting each of them with a distinct personality. ‘Glass’ is a testament to the art and heartworkers once applied to their work, but who are being increasingly replaced by soulless machines. For regular screening of such acclaimed cinematic works, a LED television set has been newly installed at the GPC auditorium. It is learnt that photojournalists will also be offered opportunities to showcase their best works from time to time at Guwahati Press Club.
The natural gas leakage from Bhatiapar crude oil well continues for 15 days, even though the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) along with an expert team from USA continue working for full dousing of the RDS-147A under Rudrasagar oilfield in Sivasagar district of eastern Assam. The blowout began on 12 June 2025 and uncontrolled leakage compelled nearly 350 families to leave their places for safety reasons. Besides the local villagers living near the old well, the high pressure gas flow impacted the surrounding environment heavily. Lately, the ONGC issued a statement claiming that ‘a significant progress in controlling the well at RDS 147A’ was made. It also added the...
When hundreds of media workers died of Covid-19 complications across India, a few people thought the corona disaster would also devastate the print media with sharply declined circulation figures resulting in shrinking advertisement revenues. Many established newspaper-publishing groups either closed many of their editions in the post-corona period or drastically reduced the number of employees to cope up with the hard situation. Some newspapers were shut down forever and many owners were compelled to sell their publications. The troubles are now brewing for the oldest media house in north-eastern region after a Dimapur-based English daily recently ceased its publications. The...
Guwahati: Amid stained bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the head of Dhaka-based interim government Dr Muhammad Yunus exchanged warm greetings on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha. In an official letter (dated on 4 June 2025), PM Modi on behalf of the people and government of Bharat conveyed good wishes to Dr Yunus and the people of Bangladesh on the auspicious occasion of the Islamic festival.
This holy festival is an integral part of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of India and is celebrated with immense joy and fervour by millions of people of Islamic faith across the country. It reminds us of the timeless values of sacrifice,...
In the decisive war against Pakistan in 1971, India won and a new nation was born, but a small State in eastern part of Bharat had to pay a heavy price with millions of East Pakistan refugees, for which Assam still cries but nobody cares. With an absorbent border with Bangladesh and unconvincing political will from the government, augmented by continued callous attitude of majority Asomiya people, the situation remains grim even today. New Delhi supported the Mukti Bahini (the freedom aspiring Bengalis of East Pakistan) in their movement against West Pakistan and finally the atrocious Pakistan forces had to surrender on 16 December 1971. But the newly born sovereign country was not...
The current interim government of Bangladesh, led by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, remains busy pursuing the final reports by a number of reform commissions with their proposals and subsequent discussions with the political party representatives. Even after nine months of its formation in Dhaka, the situation across the south Asian nation continues to be murky. Needless to mention that a sense of joy and expectation surfaced among nearly 170 million Bangladeshi nationals, when the caretaker government was constituted following a massive student-led uprising compelled sitting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee (to India) on 5 August last year. Enjoying the...
A recent controversy erupted following a social media post by a television journalist, associated with Gauhati Press Club (earlier Guwahati Press Club) in northeast India, brought many questions for the media body, which invited a minister in Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s cabinet for a cultural program, but shockingly ‘faced derogatory comments’. The particular post was generated by the journalist working for a satellite news channel owned by the CM’s family, and his outburst that the State health & family welfare minister Ashok Singhal disrespected a delegation from GPC, was taken seriously. According to the journalist, the GPC delegation went to invite Singhal for a...
The recently concluded by-polls for 48 legislative assembly constituencies in 14 States (along with two Parliamentary constituencies in Kerala and Maharashtra) divulged an important fact that no less than 41 assembly seats needed the special elections as those were vacated by the respective legislators after they were elected to the lower house of Indian Parliament. The representatives of different political parties (irrespective of their ideologies or position in the governments) participated in the last general elections and succeeded to be lawmakers in the 18th Lok Sabha.
One may wonder how all these members of State legislative assemblies turned Parliamentarians...
Geneva based the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a global organization advocating for media safety and rights, has expressed deep concern over the ongoing violence against journalists in Pakistan. The latest victim, Janan Hussain (40), was killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border on November 20, during an ambush in the Kurram area that claimed the lives of 42 Shiite Muslims. Hussain, a journalist with Channel 365 and a member of the Parachinar Press Club, is the 11th media worker killed in Pakistan this year.
"Janan Hussain's murder marks the 129th journalist killed globally since January 1, highlighting the grim reality of impunity in such cases," said Blaise Lempen, President...
The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) awarded its annual prize for the protection of journalists to Palestinian journalist Iyad Alasttal. This recognition comes amidst the unprecedented loss of over 150 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists since October 7, 2023, marking one of the highest tolls in such a short period in a conflict. The PEC dedicated the prize to the memory of these journalists who risk their lives daily.
Iyad Alasttal, a journalist from Gaza, was forced to flee due to Israeli reprisals following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Alasttal, who launched the Gaza Stories project in 2019, has been chronicling life in Gaza and reporting for French and Western media outlets....
On the midnight of August 31, 2019, an extraordinary bureaucrat unveiled the contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, amidst a large gathering of eager media personnel in Guwahati. Prateek Hajela, the then State NRC coordinator, not only explained various features of the NRC to the assembled reporters but also declared the supplementary list as the definitive one. Some television journalists, excited by the so-called "extraordinary work" of the technocrat-turned-IAS officer, went as far as to applaud Hajela as a superhero.
However, the ground reality paints a different picture. The Assam NRC has never been endorsed—nor is it today—by the Registrar General of India (RGI...
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