Discourses From the East
Discourses From the East
On most days, the road between Guwahati and Shillong is an unremarkable stretch of asphalt. It carries students rushing to classes, families attending weddings, patients seeking medical care, traders transporting goods, tourists escaping the heat of the plains, and workers…
Every monsoon in Assam follows the same script: rivers swell, embankments breach, villages vanish under water, relief camps fill, crops are lost, roads dissolve into silt. Then the water recedes, compensation is announced, embankments are patched, and the state exhales—until next year, when the script repeats almost exactly.
Democracy is often understood as a system built on communication. Citizens express their views, governments listen, institutions respond, and disagreements are addressed through dialogue rather than force. At least, this is how democracy is supposed to function. Yet history repeatedly…
Historically, satire in India often functioned as entertainment rather than disruption. Cartoons mocked politicians; stand-up comics ridiculed public life. But social media has fundamentally altered the grammar of dissent. Memes now travel faster than manifestos. Irony carries greater emotional resonance than speeches.
In India’s vast intellectual landscape, the Northeast is often described through absence missing from national debates, underrepresented in mainstream media, peripheral to dominant academic frameworks. But this language of absence hides a more complex reality. The Northeast is not simply…
In the evolving political landscape of Assam, one of the most significant yet under-theorised developments is the emergence of women not just as a numerical electoral force, but as a more stable and loyal voting constituency than men. This shift…
In the Brahmaputra Valley, the morning newspaper has never been merely a bundle of printed sheets. It is a ritual an act of self-fashioning. For generations, the soft thud of The Assam Tribune landing at the doorstep has signified more…
