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The Rohingya crisis needs greater global responsibility-sharing: Elinor Raikes by Anonno Afroz

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  Elinor Raikes is the Vice President and Head of Program Delivery, overseeing the International Rescue Committee’s programs in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America since 2019. In the last fiscal year, this included programs across 40 countries and a budget of $670 million. Prior to her current role, Elinor was IRC’s Regional Vice President for Europe and North Africa.  She has also worked for the UK government’s Department for International Development, as a humanitarian adviser on the Ebola response in Sierra Leone, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before that, Elinor was with the IRC for six years in leadership roles based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. She also worked for Save the Children for several years at the headquarters, in Lebanon and in Chad. Elinor went to the University of Edinburgh (undergraduate in French & Philosophy) and the University of London (postgraduate Master’s in Violence, Conflict a...
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The BJP’s Bengal victory exposes the erosion of Indian democracy

  Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay Recent state elections in India have produced one of the most consequential political verdicts in the country’s contemporary history, especially in West Bengal (WB), a border state of more than 100 million people that has long resisted the advance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). For the first time in history, the BJP has captured power in Bengal, winning 207 of the 293 seats declared so far and reducing the TMC to 80. One seat is due for repolling. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Four killed in post-election violence in India’s West Bengal list 2 of 4 ‘Gerrymandering’ in India’s Assam cuts Muslim representation before vote list 3 of 4 West Bengal Chief refuses to resign after ‘dirty’ election list 4 of 4 ‘Hegemonic power’: How Modi’s BJP won India’s Bengal for the first time end of list The scale of the BJP’s victory has transformed India’s political map. But the verdict has also triggered profound questions ov...
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Kerala’s Red Star Still Shines

 Nitheesh Narayanan and Vijay Prashad Every five years, the electorate in Kerala goes to the polls to elect a new state government. One of twenty-eight states in India, Kerala has a population of 35 million and has been governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) for the past decade. On 4 May, the Election Commission of India announced that the LDF won only 35 seats of the 140 for the legislature and that the LDF’s historical adversary, the United Democratic Front (UDF) won the election with 102 seats. It would have been a historical victory had the LDF prevailed because no front has won three consecutive elections in Kerala – a state with a highly educated and politically divided population. It was miraculous enough when the LDF won re-election in 2021 with 99 seats, increasing its majority by eight seats over its 91 total in 2016. No front had done that either. Was the defeat in 2026 merely a return to the back-and-forth routine imposed by the electorate on the two fronts or is t...
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Resistance as Ideology: Iran’s Political Culture of Survival by M. Reza Behnam

With a history dating back well before the Christian era, the nation known to the West as Persia officially adopted its native name of Iran in 1935. Despite having survived centuries of historical challenges, the current aggressive and treacherous actions of the United States and Israel represent an unprecedented threat to its sovereignty. In the 20th century, Iran defied America’s hegemonic ambitions in West Asia when, after millennia of authoritarian monarchical rule, the country underwent an historic popular revolution, deposed the Shah, felled a political apparatus thought unassailable, and birthed the Islamic Republic. Since the 1979 Revolution, in which Iranians had the pluck to defy a superpower, Iran has been a torchbearer in the struggle against American and Israeli domination of the region. The West continues to be confounded by its revolutionary political experiment and by the Iranians who inspired it. Iran’s ability, following the Revolution, to imagine an entirely new gove...
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