The Coffee House Experience

Analyzing ancient DNAs of different populations led to many astonishing discoveries about the past of our species. Unsurprisingly, like other areas, scientific findings through genome analyses collided with conventional wisdoms leading to cultural and political battle. This is especially true for India where a certain political ideology, deeply rooted in conjectured indigenousness, has been gainin...

Can we attribute the BJP's rise in West Bengal to the efficacy of their welfare programs? Or is Hindutva and / or PM Modi's personal popularity the key to the party's winning formula in the state? Prof Pushkar Maitra (Monash University) joins us in the latest episode of The Coffee House Experience to discuss all this and much more. Hosted by Srinjoy Ganguly Youtube: https://youtu.be/Mll6HUt6qSc #C...

The Indian Constitution is widely perceived today as a transformative document that sought to ‘educate’ the first citizens of an India, then recently freed from the yoke of colonial rule, about what living in a democracy substantively means. It would be surprising then to note that large parts of the document are essentially re-purposed from the Government of India Act 1935, which was widely revil...

Is it inevitable that Bangla as a language will eventually be colonized by the Hindi - Hindu - Hindusthan consensus, which is currently ruling the roost in New Delhi? Garga Chatterjee is at his combative best here as he dissects this possibility and declaims the historical antecedents of the present moment. Youtube: https://youtu.be/KumuxutFeeo #CHE #thecoffeehouseexperience #GargaChatterjee #Poli...

India's democratic experiment presents an interesting dichotomy. While elections have witnessed high voter participation rates on a sustained basis, Indian citizens are quite vocal in expressing their distrust of their elected representatives in the Parliament. Ronojoy Sen, senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies at the National University of Singapore, joins us in this episo...

The Marxism-Leninism (ML) movement in India started in the 1970s with the famous Naxalbari uprising to overthrow the Government and establish a one-party socialist state la China. Later, the movement was divided into several fragments, a number of which attempted to re-interpret the theory of ML in the Indian context, and subsequently joined electoral politics. Communist Party of India (Marxist–Le...

While most electoral contests today are waged in the battlefield of cultural ideas, the free markets vs centrism debate was firmly set at the centre of the early Indian republic's mainstream political discourse. In fact, free markets served as the raison d'etre of the Swatantra Party, deemed as the first classical liberal party in the nation's political history. Prof Aditya Balasubramanian (Austra...

Barna Saha, a professor of computer science at University of California, San Diego, started her journey in computer science at Jadavpur University. Afterwards with a Master’s at IIT Kanpur, she moved to the US for PhD, and eventually became one of the leading theoretical computer scientist researchers, recognized for her unique contribution to approximate algorithms in the fine-grained setting amo...

Anupam Guha, a computer scientist by training (with graduate degrees from prestigious Georgia Tech and Univ of Maryland), decided to pursue the public policy related questions from a computer science perspective. With the explosive growth in AI technologies, several tech stalwarts (such as the likes of Elon Musk) expressed their deep concerns about its potential disruption in the job market. Howev...

He is a leader in the Indian analytics industry with 20+ years' experience. He is a co-founder of the wildly popular digital storytelling medium, Paperclip. Tune in to get a sneak peek into Indranath Mukherjee's journey. #banglapodcast #datanalytics #paperclips #AI #machinelearning #IndranathMukherjee

n India Maoism flourished as a struggle of marginalized groups, such as peasants and several indigenous peoples. While characterized by violent armed struggle and guerrilla warfare akin to other similar movements across the globe, Indian Maoism got its special character by taking the deep-rooted caste-division into account and marry it with the universal class-struggle. Suparna Banerjee, a sociolo...

Since its publication, NEP 2020 has been in the center of numerous controversies. While many lauded it for apparent modernization of Indian education by enabling more flexible curriculum, it has been criticized for over-centralization, politicization and broadening the way to invite more private capital into an already highly unequal education system. In this episode Swati Moitra, a professor at G...

Be it Edith Simmons (Mahanagar) or Violet Stoneham (36 Chowringhee Lane), the Anglo-Indian community's portrayal in cinema can be deemed enigmatic, to say the least. This dovetails into the challenge of identity that is central to the community's enduring presence in independent India. Barry O Brien, noted quizmaster and ex-MLA of the WB Legislative Assembly, joins us to discuss his book "The Angl...

Anindya Sen Gupta, a faculty at JU Film studies, and a renowned film critique, is a keen observer of the evolution of cinema. In this podcast he talks about his journey with Cinema, its evolution, and trend in contemporary cinema, in particular with the rapid development in technology aka algorithms. This episode is co-hosted by a special host Anubhav Roy Anindya's academic webpage: https://jadavp...

Rajibul Islam, physicist at the University of Waterloo, joins us in the latest episode. His research interests are in quantum information processing, in particular quantum simulation and computation. He is also a co-founder of bigyan.org.in , a leading online science outreach platform in Bangla.

Garga Chatterjee, a Harvard PhD and currently working as a faculty at Indian Statistical Institute, is known more for his fervent support for Bengali Nationalism and rigorous opposition to "Hindi Imperialism". He, as the founding member and general secretary of Bangla Pokkho, constantly fights for rights of Bengalis within the Indian Union. Nevertheless, Bangla Pokkho often receives criticism for...

Amartya Bhattacharyya, a software engineer by profession, and a film-maker by passion likes to follow unconventional approaches in making films. He is a truly independent film-maker, who also does cinematography and editing (and even make-ups) in his films. His films contain unusual ideas, abstract narratives and unique subjects. His recent film "Adieu Godard" received worldwide accolades. In this...

Trina Nileena Banerjee, erstwhile actor and currently a faculty member at CSSS Calcutta, joins us to discuss about the history of the theatre movement in Bengal. Within the said context, we double click on the gender politics of the movement to understand how the aesthetic representations of women on stage were often at odds with their role as cultural activists in the movement. Trina's homepage:...

Sayandeb Chowdhury, an academic by profession, explored the legacy of Uttam Kumar in his book "Uttam Kumar – A Life in Cinema". In this discussion he talks about the underlying research he pursued for the book, elaborates on many of his findings and provides his perspective on the present day's cultural vacuum in Bengali society.

Debarshi, an independent journalist, writer and film-maker attempts to demystify the absurdities of the contemporary language of art and culture.

Catherine Masud, along with life-partner Tareque Masud, left a lasting imprint on Bangladeshi cinema with works like Muktir Gaan, Muktir Kotha, and Matir Moina. Catherine’s long and intriguing journey took her from the United States to Bangladesh, just when the young country was waking up to a new dawn in films, steered by a new generation of young and talented filmmakers. She had a ringside view...

By trying to marry western-style liberal democracy with soviet-style central economic planning (that too, against the backdrop of Cold War politics), the first crop of leaders in independent India undertook a very bold experiment to say the least. The Planning Commission, with Prof PC Mahalanobis at its helm, was responsible for spearheading a lion's share of the allied efforts. While the whole co...

Partha Banerjee has been inducted into RSS through his father at a very young age. However, in his early youth the ideological conflict between the RSS ideology and the liberal Bengali philosophy had started to bother him. Finally he raised a number of fundamental questions to the RSS leadership - as the answers remained unsatisfactory, he decided to quit the two decade long association and subseq...

Sayantan Dutta is a film critic, who writes about Bangla Cinema in his blog. Recently, one of his write-ups, which criticizes the recent film Aparajito (2022) in a unique fashion, became viral in social media. In this episode he elaborated on his criticism of this film while extending that to contemporary Bangla Cinema and Society. This episode was hosted by Soumik, Pratyay and Srinjoy. Link for S...

Saptarshi Mukherjee, a faculty of economics at IIT Delhi elaborately discusses Game Theory in political economy and also in everyday life in layman's term with Srinjoy and Soumik.