Pallab Bhattacharya

When the Indian cargo vessel MV, named after former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, set sail carrying 200 tonnes of food grain on a 2,350 km journey

If I am asked to pick one song from a Hindi film that best encapsulates how the posterity would look back at the singing legends Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi, it would be “Pagla Kahin Ka” (1970), where they sing: “tum mujhe yun bhula na paoge / jab kabhi bhi geet sunoge mere / sang sang tum bhi gungunaoge”.

Lata Mangeshkar’s voice is immortal.

It was the spring of 1985 in New Delhi. I, along with my father Vishnupada Bhattacharya, a linguist, literary critic and a teacher at the Department of Modern Indian Languages in Delhi University, came out of Vigyan Bhavan after watching Satyajit Ray’s “Ghare Baire.”

Rejecting or returning official awards is not uncommon in India.

A political battle to appropriate the legacy of India’s freedom struggle icon Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is going on between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

On January 8, 2022, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the schedule of fresh assembly elections in five Indian states—Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa,

On December 29, 2021, India’s Chief Justice NV Ramana sent out a message to the Indian media that could not have been timelier. In fact, it served as a wake-up call.

Since the first Omicron case of Covid-19 was detected in Karnataka on December 2, instances of the most rapidly mutating and contagious variant of the disease have been on the rise across India.

As a teenage school student in 1971 living in Delhi, I had a limited idea about Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin wrapped up his six-hour visit to New Delhi on December 6, most commentaries on India-Russia relations invariably termed it as the continuation of decades of romance that first blossomed in the Cold War era—a global geo-political scenario that is very different from what it is today.

The first conference of top national security officials of eight Asian countries on crisis-hit Afghanistan, hosted by India on November 10, sent out an important message relating to the need for preventing the war-torn country from becoming a safe haven for global terrorism once again, for an inclusive government, and an unhindered supply of humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.

It is not very often that one sees the prime minister of a country publicly tendering an apology for a job they failed to push through.

Electoral politics in a democracy like India is all about taking the right decision at the right time and popular perception.

In October, India reached the important milestone of administering one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses, accomplished in 278 days since the inoculation drive was launched on January 16 this year.

That Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a penchant for springing off surprise when it comes to India’s engagement with the world has once again been proven at the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.

As India inches towards fresh general elections in 2024, there is a wind of change in the political landscape.

Satyajit Ray’s 1976 film “Jana Aranya” is as much a socio-political commentary as it is about the dark underbelly of India’s business world.

Factional feud and mutual recrimination among leaders in public, either at state or national level, are nothing new to India’s main opposition party—Congress Party.

About a fortnight ago, when senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid asserted that his party was still in the “best position” to clinch 120-130 seats in the next Lok Sabha elections in 2024, and assume the leadership of a prospective anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposition coalition, he set the cat among the pigeons.