Monthly Archives: July 2017

An appeal to Prime Minister Modi

Mr Prime Minister, I was absolutely astonished by the way the Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has treated The Argumentative Indian, a documentary on Amartya Sen by economist Suman Ghosh.
It’s an innocuous film, beautifully crafted.
Prof Sen in an interview said it was not so much the word ‘cow’, the fact that “I raised my eyebrows and complained whether in a country as multi-religious as India, whether cow slaughter could be banned, on which the lives of so many people depend.”
He also said “It’s not the use of the word ‘Gujarat’ that they didn’t like, but my reference to what happened in 2002 in Gujarat that they don’t like.”
The Censor diktat has raised a question: Is this the way the democracy is being interpreted now?

Mission: Serving poor in a remote village

My destination: A medical camp at Sri Ramakrishna Sevashram in Dakshin Akhratala village in North 24 Parganas. Rivers Bidyadhari and Betuni meet here, about 70km from Kolkata.

Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur conducts the medical camp on third Sunday every month.

I got into the Innova along with my friend Satyaki Pal (he’s been teaching English in Narendrapur RK Mission College since 1983) near Jadavpur police station around 8.45am last Sunday (July 16). Our next stop was SSKM Hospital where we had to pick up three doctors– Dr Anisha Rathore, Dr Akhansha Mishra and Dr Varsha Saboo– who volunteered for the medical camp.