Book Fair 2010

The 34th Calcutta Book Fair was inaugurated on Monday afternoon (Jan.24) at Milon Mela off Eastern Metropolitan Bypass.Mexico is the focal theme at Book Fair 2010. Mexican film festival will be held at Nandan and a Mexican food festival at the fair. Each year the organiser of the fair Publishers and Book Sellers Guild selects a Theme Countryand authors from that country are invited to read excerpts and discuss their works.
The biggest book fair in Asia, the annual Calcutta Book Fair is a popular cultural event in the city that attracts publishers,writers, buyers and book lovers from all over India and aboard.The fair now not only confined to books only.It includes a world food market, exhibitions,and other forms of entertainment.The Calcutta Book Fair (27 January to 7 February 2010) is a public book fair which receives over 2 million visitors.The Calcutta Book Fair comprises over 600 temporary pavilions which are run by publishers and booksellers.This year the number of pavilions increases

Conduct investigation independently like traditional muckrakers

In 2008,a major news story that dominated the local TV stations in Calcutta for several weeks was the death of a bright young man.His body was found dead beside railway tracks near Calcutta.I narrate the story in a nutshell.Rizwanur, 30, was found dead between Dumdum and Bidhannagar Road railway station on 22 September 2007,body covered with injury marks and head smashed a month after marring local business tycoon AshokToddy’s daughter against her families wishes.
The youth had accused Lalbazar, the head quarter of Calcutta police of pressuring her wife to return to her father and threatening to arrest Rizwanur for kidnapping if she didn’t ,according to his family and an NGO whose help he had sought.According to the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR),Rizwanur’s complaint said that Assistant Commissioner (anti rowdy section) Sukanti Chakraborty and deputy commissioner(headquarter) Gywant Singh had tried persuasion. Later City Detective Chief Ajay Kumar issued the arrest threat on September prompting the girl to go back for seven days to Todi’s Saltlake home from where she never returned.Later,all the accused police officers including Police commissioner were transferred.
Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya ordered a CID (criminal Investigation Department) probe into Rizwanur’s death.Later, the case was handed over to the internal intelligence agency of India, Central bureau of Investigation (CBI).TV stations tried to compete each other -live footages -sensationalize the whole issue-even cross the journalistic ethics-violating people’s privacy.They follow CID later CBI officials blindly and ‘hijack’ people related to the case who were questioned by the central investigative agency,to their studious.But,unlike Tehelka, a magazine, conducts independent investigations on several high profile cases,local TV stations avoided independent investigations on this particular issue.For instance,in Nithari murder case after a four-week-long Investigation, Tehelka exposed that police had helped Moninder Singh Pandher,Nithari’s serial killer to cover up the entire episode where at least 19 children missing from Nithari, a slum in Noida near Delhi from 2005 to 2006.Their sting operations blew the cover up.But TV stations of Calcutta by and large avoided independent investigations and blindly followed the theories of CBI.They could have done the investigation by obtaining call details of Rizwanur and others closely associated with the case from the service providers and conducted their investigation independently like traditional muckrakers.

Jyoti Basu had donated his body

Veteran Marxist leader of India Jyoti Basu will not be cremated but his body will be handed over on Jan. 19 to a state-run hospital.The veteran Communist leader and former Chief Minister of West Bengal had donated his body.Jyoti Basu’s body, now preserved in a funeral parlour, Peace Heaven, will be taken in a procession on Jan 19 to Writers’ Building (state secretariat) and then to the state assembly, where it will be kept for the public to pay homage.The body will be handed over to the SSKM Hospital by the party leaders.The veteran Communist leader passed away on Sunday (Jan 17).On January 1, Jyoti Basu was hospitalised with pneumonia. The 95 old veteran communist leader was admitted to AMRI Hospital in Salt Lake. In July 2009, Basu was admitted to the same hospital after suffering from transient loss of consciousness while brushing his teeth.In 2008, he had to stay in hospital for several days after he fell at home and a haemorrhage was detected in his brain.
Jyoti Basu was born on July 8, 1914 at HarrishRoad in Calcutta. Jyoti Basu graduated with honours from the ArtsFaculty of the Presidency College in 1935.He went to England to studylaw. Returning to India, he started practicing law. In 1977, the firstLeft Front Government was elected in West Bengal and Basu became the Chief Minister and remained the Chief Minister till 2000.His government made land reforms, which benefited the poor.The Communist Party of India (Marxist)voted against a proposal in 1996 to allow Jyoti Basu to be the prime minister of national coalition government in the Centre.Basu and his followers described the decision as a ‘historic blunder’.