India as a largest democracy in the globe may be a prime source of inspiration for many other nations, but the country is itself facing crisis in many fronts. The deepen crisis of governance & administration, regional imbalance, strain in Centre-State relationship, unabated corruption, and Indian civil society with a blur vision only show the symptom of the calamity we are waiting for, said Dr BB Dutta, former Rajya Sabha Member, while addressing a distinguished gathering at Calcutta High Court auditorium today morning. He was delivering the welcome address in a seminar cum workshop on ‘Urgency of Reform in the Indian Political System: Revisiting the Constitution’ at Kolkata, where hundreds of illustrious personalities from different sections of Indian society have rubbed their soldiers. Organized by the Calcutta High Court Bar Association in association with Divya Jeevan Foundation, the seminars is also addressed by Justice Kalyan J. Sengupta, Justice JS Verma, Himangshu Dey with many others. The day long seminar is also attended by SC Jamir, former Goa Governor and Nagaland chief minister, Manas Choudhury, MLA from Meghalaya, BK Nath, proprietor of Jugasankha Publications, Guwahati with some northeast India based journalists.
Making his point clear at the seminar Dr Dutta, also the chairman of Divya Jeevan Foundation, highlighted the need of continued dialogues for a better India. He also clarified that the exercise is for educating Indian themselves, but no way designed to malign any political party or leaders in the country. Dr Subhash C. Kashyap, a constitutional expert insisted that there is an urgent need of political reform in India as the a partial colonial model of constitution was adopted after India’s independence. He also cited that excessive power at New Delhi (we call it as centre) has created tremendous problems in governance. Dr Kashyap also argued that if the sovereignty belongs to the people, they should be allowed to be governed by themselves (without unnecessary interference from the Union government in New Delhi), because the political power must return to the people.
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The United Peoples Party (UPP) has formed a four member cell of Right to Information (RTI) of the party to see development activities in the region. The cell was constituted with Satya...
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Security forces belonging to Police, Army and CRPF apprehended a link man of the NDFB-S in a joint operation at Shantipur area under Kachugaon PS in Kokrajhar district today. Getting information...
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Four districts of BTAD is all set to the counting of council election tomorrow that held on April 8 for the 40 seats of council Assembly and various party and organisations including ruling BPF, PCDR...
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The killer wine flu has claimed two more lives in the state creating panic among the people these days.The reports of fresh deaths came from Jorhat district where two other people have been...
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...
It’s shocking to report that a number of Guwahati-based scribes and RTI (right to information) activists have been facing interrogation and even arrest by Assam chief minister’s special vigilance cell following the allegations of Sewali Devi Sharma, the prime accused in Rs 105 crore State council of educational research and training (SCERT) scam, as being blackmailers to her in different occasions. The arrestees include a female reporter (identified as Pujamoni Das alias Honey Kashyap, who reportedly took a large volume of money from Ms Sharma) along with a satellite news channel reporter named Bhaskarjoti Hazarika. RTI activists namely Rabijit Gogoi (who pretended to be a...
Can we imagine a world of zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero carbon emissions with a new approach in post-corona economics! Ask Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and he will answer in the affirmative. The university professor turned revolutionary banker believes that the human race should not only dream about a safer world by reducing global warming, wealth concentration and unemployment, but also work in that direction with personal and collective capacities.
In his latest book titled ‘A World of Three Zeros’, Prof Yunus proposes a new economic system focusing on every human being as an entrepreneur in the making. He believes that humans are not born to work only for...
Guwahati: Assam is all set to host first sustainable financial working group (SFWG) meeting and Youth 20 inception meeting as part of India's year-long G20 presidency, where it is meticulously chalked out various tour programs that would help in promoting the State’s rich biodiversity and socio-cultural heritage in international arena. The authorities have completed the preparation to welcome the foreign delegates to the State.
Guwahati is adorned with digital wall painting, thematic gates, flags of G 20 countries, LED cut-outs, standees, hoarding, etc as part of branding and beautification. The government has also completed the arrangement for the visiting delegates to places of...
Guwahati: India observes National Press Day on 16 November with an aim to pay tributes to everyone who contributed to the growth of print media along with its mentor & watchdog the Press Council of India (PCI). Moreover, it’s also an occasion for the practicing media persons to introspect seriously over their noble profession where it has been heading in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era. Since its inception and functioning, the PCI continues to symbolize a free and responsible press in the largest democracy in the world. Among all press or media councils, functioning in various countries, the PCI is recognised as a unique entity that exercises authority over the media and also safeguards...
Participating in a debate on satellite television or digital channels needs some homeworks to make the deliberations short and clear. Unless you face an arrogant anchor and unruly participants, the experience in talk shows normally emerges as an intriguing one. It happened to me, as I had recently participated in a digital media discussion on the pertinent issue of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, where the prime guest was none other than the immediate past State NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma. The talk show host Dikshit Sharma put the questions in a clever way so that the issue comes alive and my part was just to interpret Dev Sarma’s version for clarity to the valued...
Guwahati: It was an amazing experience to attend the foundation day of a 25 year old press club in central Assam on a lazy Sunday, where a number of senior citizens along with rural scribes and novice journalists were waiting to listen to my speech. It’s easier to address a journalist’s meet- where we can discuss many issues with liberties, but while the audience includes respected senior citizens and young people, it becomes a difficult task to speak to them together.
First, the question that arises, how much should I highlight the eroding credibility of the mainstream media around India in general and Assam in particular and secondly what may be the role of social (alternate/digital)...
Guwahati: A year-long celebration of 100 years of sports journalism in Assam begins coinciding on the day while the first ever news related to a football competition is published in Asomiya (a weekly news magazine mentored by Chandra Kumar Agarwala) on 1 July 1923. Assam Sports Journalists Association (ASJA), which is affiliated with the Sports Journalists Federation of India (a national affiliate of the International Sports Press Association), has taken the lead in celebrating the occasion that will culminate on 1 July next year.
On Saturday, flags for ASJA and the centenary celebration were hoisted by ASJA’s founder president Balendra Mohan Chakraborty and his successor...
Reactions from the public (sensitive readers) against a news item in any newspaper (also news channel) are usual in India, but outrages against the mainstream media outlets in digital platforms for not covering a particular issue is definitely an unusual phenomenon. The north-eastern state of Assam witnessed such public fury against some of the editor-journalists for avoiding press conferences by opposition political parties where they targeted the state chief minister for his family’s alleged land scam.
The organized public uproar in the alternate media was so intense that the celebrity editor-journalists of Assam did not dare to clarify their positions. They preferred to avoid the...
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