Mihir, having conquered the B.A. examination with that peculiar Bengali combination of ambition, anxiety, and ancestral expectation, was now seated upon the vast verandah of unemployment, not knowing whether to enter the temple of scholarship, the bazaar of service, or the crematorium of respectable idleness. At precisely this providentially purposeless hour, the daily Anandabazar produced, like a conjurer from a turban, an advertisement from Kalpa-Khali. A B.A.-passed privat

Weekly Top Ten Stories From India dated 29th May issue , 2026 ARTICLE 1 ; Telangana Unleashes ₹10 Lakh Zero-Interest Loan Push for SHG Women, Eyes 8,000 Village Enterprise Hubs In a move on 26 May 2026, Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy announced a comprehensive empowerment package for self-help group (SHG) women, directly linking them to agricultural and retail value chains. The state will allocate land parcels to SHG collectives for establishing supermarkets, logi

There are two kinds of journeys in my life. One begins with a government letter, three Excel sheets, a vehicle requisition, and a WhatsApp group called "Urgent Field Coordination." The other begins with Bala standing in the drawing room and saying, "Kallol, this time behave like a normal researcher, not an archaeological goat." Unfortunately, this journey began in both ways. And this time there was a third beginning too—a phone call that tied everything together. Srinjay's ca

Summer vacation, to us, meant three noble institutions—mangoes, afternoon ludo, and standing at the street corner in Calcutta while making plans for saving civilization. There were four of us: myself, Patla; our self-appointed commander Bhonda Banerjee; the bespectacled machine of logic, Tintin; and the permanently hungry Kabul. That year Bhonda made a declaration. “Look here, Patla,” he said, with the air of a man addressing the United Nations, “man must return to nature. Ca

West Bengal has moved into the front-runner group in the SDG India Index, with an official composite score of 70 in 2023-24, up by 8 points from 2020-21. That is meaningful progress, but it does not yet reflect the kind of ward-level service transformation needed in the state’s largest urban system. Kolkata remains the logical starting point because the Kolkata Municipal Corporation governs 144 wards, the city’s official 2011 population baseline is about 4.50 million, and KMC

Weekly Top 10 News For Earth, Environment and Planetary Science 25 April and 2 May 2026 East Africa’s Turkana Rift may be nearer to continental breakup A major tectonic finding from the Turkana Rift in Kenya and Ethiopia showed that East Africa’s continental crust is thinning more sharply than previously understood. Researchers reported that the rift stretches about 500 km and that the African and Somali plates are moving apart at nearly 4.7 mm per year. Most strikingly, the

Chatujye-moshai said, “If you speak of tigers, then speak of the tiger of Rudraprayag. A truly weeping, sentimental fellow! In summer he goes there from the Sundarbans for a change of air. But such is the sanctity of the place that he does not touch ordinary people; after all, they are pilgrims. He eats only sahibs, by the roadside.” Binod, the pleader, said, “A patriotic tiger, then. Could we not import a few of that species here? Swaraj would arrive in no time. No need of s

Ten Promising research and innovation for a better tomorrow Science and technology news this week shows a clear global pattern: innovation is moving closer to real human use. From brain chips and artificial neurons to mRNA delivery, AI reasoning, quantum batteries, engineered bacteria and adaptive materials, the stories below show how Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics can improve healthcare, reduce energy use, strengthen research, and create more humane tools f

Between 17 and 24 April 2026, Earth, environment and planetary science delivered a week of connected warnings and wonders. The strongest message was that our planet’s systems are active, interlinked and increasingly measurable, from freshwater lakes and ocean currents to wildfire plumes, volcanic heat, Martian chemistry and methane seas on Titan. The week began with water. The World Bank and partner development lenders launched the Water Forward initiative, aiming to improv

Long ago, in a village where the river curved like a silver anklet, there lived a weaver named Nimai who could make cloth so fine that even the breeze felt shy touching it. His saris carried colors of dawn, mustard fields, parrot wings, and wet earth. Yet Nimai remained poor, because he sold fairly, gave freely, and often forgot to ask payment from widows, priests, wandering singers, and anyone who praised the border design with enough feeling. His wife, Kamala, kept the ho

Earth, environment and planetary science Updates : 17th to 24 th April , 2026 The World Bank and partner development lenders launched the Water Forward initiative, aiming to improve water security for one billion people by 2030. Its first phase will focus on 14 water-stressed countries across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The programme is built around reducing urban leakage, modernising irrigation, expanding wastewater reuse and using better data for planning. Its

India has already made a constitutional commitment to reserve one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. The national task now is to translate that commitment into an orderly, transparent, and time-bound implementation process so that the objective is achieved well before the 2029 general election. Byline By Kallol Saha India has reached an important democratic milestone in accepting the principle of greater representation for women in legislatures.

India does not need another symbolic endorsement of women’s political representation. It needs implementation. The constitutional principle is already settled: the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 provides one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha, State Assemblies, and the Delhi Assembly, including within SC and ST reserved seats. But the same law also postpones implementation until after delimitation based on the first census figures published after the Act’s

The Lok Sabha on Friday, April 17, 2026, turned into the centre of one of the most consequential constitutional debates in recent years, as Members discussed a package of three linked measures: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, the Delimitation Bill, 2026, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The government argued that the package was meant to operationalise one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies before the 2029 ge

By Shree Shree Shachandra Das There once lived a weaver and his wife. They were very poor. The weaver begged for alms every day, and that was how the two of them survived. But his wife was hard to please! On days when his begging bowl was empty, the weaver dreaded returning home. By ill luck, one day the weaver could not get a single alms. After wandering all day, he was returning home in the evening with empty hands when he sat down near a dense forest and began to cry. Sudd

In a certain city of Baghdad, there lived a barber named Alishakul. He was especially renowned in that city for his skill in shaving and hair-cutting. People came to him from faraway lands for his services. Gradually, his business flourished. But when his position became secure, his greed for money grew so strong that he began devising new schemes to cheat people and make easy profits. If a simple, unsuspecting person came to him, he would entrap him in clever talk and take e

At the home of a wealthy man in New Zealand, preparations were underway for his son’s wedding. He was a refined, generous-hearted gentleman, courteous to everyone, regardless of status. For his only son’s wedding, he decided to invite acquaintances of all ranks, both high and low, and to celebrate the occasion with great pomp. Invitations were sent far and wide to friends and associates. Several days before the wedding, the arrangements for feeding the guests began. There was

Original Story By Shri Jaladhar Sen There was a little girl named Hiron. She was as beautiful as Lakshmi, and just as virtuous. But alas! The poor girl’s life was full of sorrow. When Hiron was two years old, her mother died. Her father remarried. After some time, Hiron had a younger sister, whom her father named Kiran. But Kiran did not resemble Hiron in appearance. Her complexion was dark, her nose was broad, her forehead high, her eyes small like tiny beads, and she had ve

On a winter evening when the clouds over Europe sagged like tired banners after a parade, the Owl arrived and chose a crooked chimney outside a bomb-scraped town to be his perch. From there he could see a field that used to be wheat and was now a geometry exercise in craters, and beyond that the ribbon of a road where headlights flowed towards the border and never seemed to come back. The Owl blinked, the way owls do when they have seen this scene before in other centuries wi

My name is Khoka. I am not a hero. I am not a vlogger. I am not even a particularly brave person, as my mother reminds me whenever a cockroach enters the kitchen and I climb onto the dining table like a monkey who has forgotten his caste. But I was there. On the Madhumati Dreamliner. And what I saw has permanently rearranged the furniture of my imagination. First, you must understand the boat. The Madhumati Dreamliner was a name that required a visa to enter the country of tr