Chintaa


Constituting The Post-Imperial Global Community

Let us celebrate Chaitra Sangkranti

The word ‘sangkranti’ implies the moment of transition that has no beginning and no end; the notion is not linear, but cyclical. The sun moves through space and every month crosses each of the signs of the zodiac, known as rashi, and completes twelve cycles of the year. So there is no ‘new’ year but return of the cycle, or the ‘chakra’. In the cyclic movement, every point is literally the end of the cycle as well as the beginning. There is no new beginning, and therefore no ‘past’ in the linear sense of the term. The word ‘sangkranti’ captu (Read More )

Mass Line, Repressive Media, and State Terror

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X

Poet and writer Farhad Mazhar is not intimidated by the propaganda campaign being orchestrated by a partisan section of the media community. It is engaged in this activity to create the kind of political condition that would incite the regime to punish him. This particular section of the media fears the poet’s social critique which exposes the contradictions (Read More )

Eve’s Monologue undermines women’s movement

Every day we have to read or hear about some rape and also killing after rape occurring in different areas of the country. Rape and killings are direct physically attack on a woman’s body but violence against women is more than that. These other forms of violence caused by social, economic and cultural factorsand various development policies are often ignored not because that they are not directly physical or invisible but they must be made so to justify systemic violence. Injecting Depo-Provera into poor women’s bodies or implanting Norplant under her skin for population control and kee (Read More )

BANGLADESH: State's unpardonable failures deserves credible investigarion

The entire governmental machinery of Bangladesh, with its retinue of law-enforcement units, intelligence agencies, and security forces, has totally and abysmally failed to protect minority communities in the South Eastern region of the country. A large number of monasteries, temples, houses and establishments of the Buddhist communities of the area, and even those belonging to some of the Hindu communities, have been subject to open arson and looting. Starting on September 29th, 2012 for 3 straight days the rampage continued in Cox's Bazar and Chittagong districts. The devastating attacks began at R (Read More )

Climate ‘negotiations’ and the World in peril...

From Copenhagen to Cancun: Low expectation prevails

The COP 16 of 2010 UNFCCC climate conference began in Cancun from 29th November for 12 days amidst much lower expectation of achieving significant commitment from the developed countries for lowering the emissions. After the failed climate conference of the COP 15, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, there is not much to expect from Cancun. The struggle of the environmental activists and the delegates of t (Read More )

An Interview with Critical Political Scientist Norman Finkelstein

Israeli Domination and the Workings of Ideology

Norman Finkelstein is one of the leading American critics of Israeli foreign policy. As a political scientist he wrote extensively on the exploitation of the holocaust as an ideological weapon and on the crisis in Palestinian occupied territories. He received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

He has a long history of teaching political theory and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even though he clearly met publishin (Read More )

Financial Crisis & Garment Workers of Bangladesh

Garment Workers work harder but less food to eat

This paper presented  by Farida Akhter at the workshop  'South Asia Regional Workshop on Global Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Women: A Human Rights Perspective'; it  took place on 22-23 August 2010 in Delhi, India and organised by UNIFEM, PWESCR and HEINRICH  BöLL STIFTUNG. It was prsented as a Bangladesh country perspective on the impact of the current crisis on women, their livelihoods and human rights.


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World Population Day 2010

Reliable and Accurate Data on Population for Whom?

The 11th of July is World Population Day. The United Nations Population (UNFPA) has selected the theme "Everyone Counts", which according to them "will underscore the importance of data for development". The main issue raised through this theme is of "fostering an understanding of why reliable, disaggregated data is so crucial to progress and encourage people to participate in the census and other data collection efforts".

No one denies the need for reliable and accurate data. But t (Read More )

An Interview with Anti-Racist Feminist Sunera Thobani

Mapping the Questions, Politics and Location of Resistance

Sunera Thobani teaches at the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. She is also past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada's largest feminist organization. The first woman of color to serve in this position, she made anti-imperialism and anti-racism central to the women's movement.  Her book ‘Exalted Subjects’ places new emphasis on the question of indigenism, race and citizenship (Read More )

Budget 2010-11

Performing 'Digitally' and in 'Shadows"

'Purana Kashundi Ghata'

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith presented the National Budget for 2010-11 fiscal year digitally in the parliament on June 10, using power point for the first time in Bangladesh. His digital performance, a virtual exercise on a virtual reality, streamed through screens and print media in order to fool the common citizens with high and ambitious figures of growth rate. It is a piece of amusement of course. Post (Read More )