THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in a statement issued on August 27, has welcomed the release of the Hema Committee report which has painstakingly conducted an inquiry into the shocking atrocities against women in the film industry. It is the first time that a state government has formed a committee to study the malpractices in the film industry and harassment that women have to undergo. It is a known fact that women working in the film industry are victimised everywhere.

THE release of the report of the Justice Hema Committee set up by the government of Kerala ‘to study and report on various issues faced by women in cinema and to suggest solutions to such issues’ on August 19, 2024 has seen a number of women connected with the Malayalam film industry, mostly actors, coming forward, and making serious allegations of sexual assault, abuse, misconduct etc against well-known men in the industry who are actors, directors, and important office-bearers in associations connected with the film world and also public institutions.  This is a very welcome development i

THE impact of the West’s encounter with the Americas was devastating for its people. The population of the Americas before Europe’s “discovery” has been estimated to be anything between 2 to 100 million people. The figures of genocide also depend not only on different estimates of the Indigenous population of the Americas but also on what numbers should be excluded in the counting of victims of genocide. Do we include those who died of diseases as their societies and the productive basis of their societies were destroyed?

A GOOD deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina’s government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation in that country. A country that was being hailed as an economic “miracle” just a few months ago is now mired in an economic crisis that has suddenly worsened the living conditions of vast numbers of people.

‘SOMETHING is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The same sentence perfectly fits West Bengal today under Mamata Banerjee’s TMC rule. The horrific incident of gang-rape and murder of a young female doctor, Abhaya, as named by her colleagues, within the premises of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital (MCH) in Kolkata has stunned the sensibilities of all citizens of the country. The crude attempts by the state government led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee to hush up this gruesome crime are highly condemnable.