Devastatingly symbolic, the raw egg has become the latest vocabulary of public dissent in West Bengal, reviving a centuries-old tradition of shaming those in power. A 1917 cartoon caricaturing the egg-throwing incident at Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes. The price of the humble egg has suddenly increased in cities and districts of West Bengal. No one ever imagined the use of the egg as a political weapon in the hands of the common man and woman before the tumbling down

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May

The shocking events in Malda, West Bengal, where seven judicial officers were held hostage for hours during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise while being denied basic amenities, are the logical outcome of a political ecosystem nurtured under the state’s mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The officers, acting under court orders were gheraoed, deprived of food and water, and released only after a late-night rescue involving central forces. The Supreme Court of