QKolkata: Topshe Fry For Abhijit Banerjee Homecoming & More

Your daily lowdown of all things Kolkata.

Indian-American economist Abhijit Banerjee is one of the three who have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019.

(Photo: The Quint)

1. Topshe Fry, Sandesh & More To Welcome Abhijit Home

Nirmala Banerjee, 83, Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee’s mother, spent a busy Sunday planning the menu for next Wednesday and overseeing the dusting of her elder son’s bedroom, preparing it for his homecoming.

“Life has been busier than ever for the last week, attending to hundreds of known and unknown visitors and responding to innumerable phone calls congratulating me for my son’s feat. It’s a proud moment, but now it has become a little exhausting. However, on Sunday, I said a strict ‘no’ to all visitors so I could plan a decent welcome for my son who will be reaching home early on Wednesday,” said Banerjee. “Look, I didn’t even get the time to correct the date,” she said while changing the date and day on a desk calendar on a book shelf.

(Source: The Times Of India)

2. Disability Rights Activists ‘Humiliated’ At City Airport

Two of Kolkata’s four representatives at a United Nations conference on disability in New Delhi faced an hour-long trauma at the city airport before finally being allowed to board Go-Air’s flight to Delhi at 2.20pm on Sunday.

One of the flyers was Jeeja Ghosh, who was the Election Commission’s poster girl, exhorting persons with disabilities to step out and vote during the Lok Sabha Election 2019. The other person was Kuhu Das, the secretary of the Disability Activists Forum. Das, a polio survivor, wears callipers on her legs. Travelling to the same conference was Ratnaboli Ray, a champion of mental disability, who was one of the recipients of The Times Women Heroes award earlier this year.

Ghosh was stopped by a GoAir ground staff, who said she could not fly unaccompanied. CISF personnel asked Das to take off her trousers in order to check her callipers, which had set off the metal detector.

(Source: The Times Of India)

3. Dilip Ghosh Lauds Abhijit Banerjee As A ‘Big Personality’

Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh has steered clear of the line of severe criticism that many in his party’s national and state leadership have adopted against Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, calling the economics Nobel winner a “big personality” with a “huge achievement”.

Expressing hope that the Centre would get “good suggestions” from Banerjee, Ghosh asserted on Sunday that he was among the first to congratulate Banerjee and Esther Duflo, the economist’s wife and fellow Nobel winner.

(Source: The Telegraph)

4. Visva-Bharati Withdraws Nod For Workshop With ABVP Wing

Visva-Bharati authorities on Sunday decided not to allow a cultural workshop with the Rashtriya Kala Manch, a wing of RSS student arm Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), with varsity sources saying they had not been aware of the outfit’s background when they approved the two-day programme.

The event had triggered cries of “saffronisation” and a boycott call from sections of students. The Telegraph had carried a report on the controversy on Saturday. “We were not aware about the involvement of such an organisation in the workshop. Once we came to know, we instructed our journalism department not to participate on the varsity’s behalf in such a programme,” said Anirban Sircar, the public relations officer of Visva-Bharati.

(Source: The Telegraph)

5. Murshidabad Kali Puja Is Amity Beacon

Like every year, Mahendrapur is preparing for an elaborate Kali puja and the build-up in the village of over 10,000 in Murshidabad’s Suti could have been commonplace. It isn’t so because the entire population is Muslim.

To many in Mahendrapur, 280km from Calcutta, the puja brings the feel of Jamai Sashthi — a Bengali Hindu celebration of sons-in-law — a few months late after the usual summer event as many daughters come to their parents’ home for the Kali puja.

(Source: The Telegraph)