Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

Beliefs and Believers                                       * Saumitra Mohan             It is generally becoming quite fashionable for human beings to denigrate and deprecate God and religion as people go through the rigmarole of day-to-day life. This trait is noticed more when people grow up and have got through the mundane battles of their lives to make both ends meet. It also depends on the kind of formal or informal education, surroundings and circumstances that the particular human being has been through otherwise an ordinary individual is usually quite God-fearing and remains seeped in religion and the cognate rituals which seemingly have no values.             The increasingly mechanica...

Quixotic Mistakes of Bimal Gurung                                                                                     * Saumitra Mohan             The winds of change are sweeping across the Darjeeling hills. History seems to have come a full circle for Mr. Bimal Gurung who seemed to be completely out of depth with the ground realities and popular mood in is bailiwick. The split in the GJMM (Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha) and the rising voices of dissent as reigning now are nothing but a damning indictment and reflection on h...

Suicide Hobbles Our Spiritual Growth                                                             *Saumitra Mohan         There has been a worrisome rise in the number of people living with depression in recent times. The latest WHO estimates peg it at 18% between 2005 and 2015. According to WHO studies, a person commits suicide every 40 seconds somewhere in the world. While most countries with high suicide rates are poor, there are also a surprising few, highly developed and rich nations which rank very high in this sad statistics.          People of all backgrounds and age groups, howsoever educated and successful,...

Suicide Hobbles Our Spiritual Evolution                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan         There has been a worrisome rise in the number of people living with depression in recent times. The latest WHO estimates peg it at 18% between 2005 and 2015. According to WHO studies, a person commits suicide every 40 seconds somewhere in the world. While most countries with high suicide rates are poor, there are also a surprising few, highly developed and rich nations which rank very high in this sad statistics.          People of all backgrounds and a...

The Retreat of Liberal Democracy                                                           *Saumitra Mohan The world seems to be moving increasingly backward with the march of time much to the chagrin of all Panglossian expectations of the humanitarian values bringing about an eclectic, cosmopolitan and catholic human society. The incursions of regressive and retrograde forces on liberal-democratic ethos of our times are more stark and insidious today than ever before.             When the Berlin War came down in September, 1990 or when the former USSR disintegrated, people like Francis Fukuyama had vainly proclaimed ‘end of history’ with the ba...

Regulating Our Food Habits *Saumitra Mohan           Amidst all the negativity, gloom and doom centring around multiple incursions on libertarian values of a painstakingly built plural democratic society in this country, there is something very positive one came across the other day. This relates to a purported move by the Union Ministry for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution to regulate the amount of food to be served by different restaurants and hotels to their individual customers to prevent potential wastage of food.           The Hon’ble Minister also supposedly questioned the large portions of food served to each person which often results in unwarranted wastage. A section of critics has questioned the proposition as an infringement of personal liberties of citizens as it is not practically possible for anyone to fix up a uniform regime for all classes of citizens as dieta...