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Time of India
8 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Time of India
James Long Para Behala
1 2 3 4 5 6 Once the path of a chugging narrow-gauge railway meandering through sleepy hamlets on Kolkata's outskirts, James Long Sarani (JLS) has transformed into one of the city's most vibrant culinary corridors. The metamorphosis is so complete, it is hard to believe that this bustling food street in Behala was once home to a quaint British-era light railway line connecting Kalighat to Falta, with sleepy hamlets on either side. Today, as one walks down the stretch from Roy Bahadur Road to Silpara, it's no longer the sound of train whistles or steam engines that greets the ears — it's the aroma of kebabs sizzling on skewers, the whir of blenders in coffee shops, the clatter of cutlery in air-conditioned lounges, and the cheerful chatter of food lovers. The 'sweeping change' actually happened post-Covid. "Its metamorphosis from a regular, busy thoroughfare to a food street in less than 10 years has hardly any parallel anywhere else," says Dhruba Bhattacharya, a physician who grew up here and runs his chamber on JLS. You Can Also Check: Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata Much before this upsurge, JLS was marked by a 'theme puja' insurrection in the last decade of the 20th century. "It was no less than an artistic revolt against traditional Barowari Durgotsav. The theme puja wave happened on either side of JLS. Later, its influence spread to west Behala as well," says Bimal Samanta, an elderly artist and one of the precursors of theme art for Durgotsav. A New Culinary Nerve Centre JLS has emerged as the new 'eat street' of Kolkata — a food destination that rivals the likes of Southern Avenue and Park Street. Whether you're craving a lavish Bengali lunch, a quick bite of continental fusion, or a late-night bowl of noodles, this road has it all. For traditional Bengali fare, places like 'Koshe Kosha' continue to charm with their Mahabhoj Thali and whole ilish bhapa. If you're craving steaks and Mexican delicacies, Burnfield Cafe has become a popular niche haunt, despite its small seating capacity. The café culture is flourishing here. Celestial Cafe, Tribe Cafe, and Extra Cheese Bistro offer everything. "Those in search of mainstream bites have long relied on the two-storey Domino's, while Tea Junction continues to serve chai and adda in equal measure," says Anirban Dhar, a JLS resident who is fascinated by this transformation of the street. Dinner options? From Hatari's generous Chinese platters to Chowman's seafood specials, from Tandoor Park's or Tandoori Darbar's Mughlai delights to the newly opened Sartaj's luxurious spreads, this food street caters to every taste and budget. And of course, dessert isn't an afterthought here. With Baskin Robbins and Cafe Lavassa standing shoulder to shoulder, it's easy to follow up a kebab platter with a cheesecake or a scoop of cookie crunch. The Path Beneath Your Feet But what lies underneath this gourmet avenue is a story that deserves remembering. JLS was once the railbed of the Kalighat–Falta Railway (KFR), built in 1917 by McLeod's Light Railways. This 2 ft 6 in narrow-gauge line ferried people and produce between Behala and the riverine towns beyond. Running at a loss, KFR was shut down in 1957. Its tracks were dismantled, and the rail route was repurposed into a road — a pragmatic solution to a logistical problem. And so began the slow but sure urbanisation of Behala. The KFR ground, a popular public playground belonging to the railways, still bears the fading memory. Today, as public transport improves with the upcoming metro and the street continues to evolve, few pause to think that the very street they dine on was once a railway line through villages and green fields. "JLS has been an avenue with tall trees covering its path from either sidewalk. But the widening of the road in 2012-13, felling hundreds of trees, left it completely bereft of its green cover. The reduced width of the sidewalk has also made it unsafe for pedestrians," said Gour Mukherjee, an octogenarian resident of JLS. James Long Sarani, named in his honour, stands as a living legacy — a street where history runs beneath modern-day wheels and footsteps. From railway track to food track, the evolution of James Long Sarani is not just about urban transformation — it's a story of a city's layered past finding space beneath its ever-evolving present.


Time of India
a day ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Educational Apocalypse
Quixotic policies and political one-upmanship are derailing the future of an entire generation Fair is foul and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.' If the Bard were to write in the milieu of modern-day Kerala, he would have certainly repurposed this famous phrase—uttered by the witches in Macbeth—to conjure up the political debauchery, deceit and ineptitude that plague the state's public education scene. A seemingly bellicose education minister, V Sivankutty, and a pompously self-righteous higher education minister, R Bindu, have reduced the school and higher education sectors into political laboratories, where they conduct reckless experiments with arrogance and incompetence, forcing students to avoid public education institutions. Like her predecessor K T Jaleel in the previous LDF govt, minister Bindu has developed a strong notion of mistaking law and lawmakers as one and the same. If Jaleel courted controversy by toppling the university examination system to offer 'justice' to an engineering student, Dr Bindu found nothing wrong in changing the engineering entrance prospectus arbitrarily in an attempt to ensure 'justice' to a section of students who had been failed by the very policies of her own govt. She publicly insinuated that her sense of justice was somehow superior to that of the high court, which struck down the last-minute changes. The loss of marks—up to 40 in some cases—for state board students in the entrance ranking is a fact. Genuine complaints have been raised over the past five years. But how did a formula introduced by the govt in 2011 to level the playing field in engineering admissions backfire? The answer lies in the inflated results of the state higher secondary board, especially in the post-Covid era. When the state govt focused more on 'feel-good' factors as on many other fronts, Sivankutty excelled in the experiment by notoriously liberalizing higher secondary exam evaluations. The figures say it all. The number of students scoring full A+ in all subjects skyrocketed to 48,383 in 2021, up from 18,510 the year before. This plummeted to 28,450 in 2022, then slowly climbed to 33,815 in 2023 and 39,242 in 2024, before dipping to 30,145 in 2025. The fact that only 14,244 candidates scored full A+ in 2019 explains what went wrong. When the standard deviation is calculated considering the overall performance of students across boards, the high marks of state board students are bound to suffer a drastic cut. 'For standardization, marks obtained by students over multiple years are considered,' said a former commissioner of entrance examinations, requesting anonymity. He said the new method proposed by the govt to replace the 2011 formula may also prove ineffective over time. Since the new system would plug mark losses, it may actually prompt the govt to continue liberal valuation. If CBSE too adopts a similar approach, it could jeopardize the edge the govt plans to create for the state board students. What's urgently needed, he said, is a competent committee to study the issue and develop a fair mechanism for all meritorious students, across the boards. 'If we don't treat the root cause, the disease will resurface in new forms,' he added. Academic and scientist Achuthsankar S Nair, who was on the panel that devised the original formula in 2011, said the formula is scientifically sound and the grievances are genuine—at least for meritorious state board students. 'Serious fluctuations in parameters over the years may have turned the standardization process into a bane for some,' he said. If the sole aim is justice, then using only entrance exam marks might be an option. But if the goal is to level the playing field, the govt may have to give extra weightage to underprivileged sections, without hurting others. Experts agree: A solution to this complex issue is likely to be just as complex. If the entrance exam conundrum requires a more scientific temper and constant monitoring, the plight of higher education in arts and science colleges in the state has almost reached a point beyond redemption. The fight between the governor (who is also the chancellor of state universities) and the state govt over supremacy in university affairs has failed the student community. There is no permanent vice chancellor in 12 state universities. At least 40% of PG and 30% of UG seats remained vacant last year—a figure likely to worsen this year. 'The higher education sector in Kerala could collapse entirely within the next five years,' said former Kerala University pro-vice chancellor and writer J Prabhash. 'Courses that were once in high demand now have no takers. Academic activity is no longer a priority on campuses.' As student mobility and exposure to better opportunities increase, the young generation is looking elsewhere. Our society has lost faith in our public sector institutions, he said, noting that Kerala has failed to establish even a single institution of academic excellence. While the tussle between the governor and the higher education department has given a political opportunity to CPM and Sangh Parivar to engage in a public showdown, the entrance fiasco, which disadvantaged state board students, has already put a break on the migration of CBSE students to the state board for Plus Two studies. The declining intake in govt and aided schools has also ripped apart the govt's claim that public schools are on a path of revival in the state. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.


NZ Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- NZ Herald
Government ponders radical power reforms as prices rise
Back then, the person leading the prosecution was none other than Willis herself, and she was ruthless in her disallowance of Grant Robertson's excuses. Pressing Robertson on skyrocketing mortgage costs, Willis asked the following: 'Is it seriously his position that international factors are to blame for this growth in a core component of New Zealanders' cost of living?' The answer then, as it is now, is sadly yes. The international factors that were responsible for a third or more of the post-Covid inflation spike, according to Treasury research, are much the same as the factors weighing on Willis' growth prospects in 2025. These have caused Treasury to revise its forecasts for GDP growth in the coming year from an impressive and possibly election-winning 3.3% to a less impressive 2.9% at the most recent Budget. That follows revisions to its GDP estimates for the year to the end of June, which Treasury tweaked from a gloomy 0.5% growth to a decidedly grim 0.8% contraction. Voters may be slightly more forgiving of first-term Willis than they were of second-term Robertson – but only slightly. Like frustrated parents, voters tend to care less about who made the mess than they do about who will clean it up. National, a party elected on a mandate of getting New Zealand 'back on track', will begin the election year presiding over an economy that's on the same high inflation, slow growth track voters rejected in 2023. There's not a lot of space for the Government to move. Witness the performative outrage over butter prices, which Willis will raise in a meeting with Fonterra boss Miles Hurrell when she meets him next week. These high prices are the result of a good thing: high commodity prices that are buoying rural economies. The problem is that incomes are so low people cannot afford to pay them. The Government knows these prices are a good thing (Willis certainly does, having spent five years at Fonterra) and so does most of the Opposition. As recently as April, it celebrated them, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon then telling the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce the economic recovery was being led by farming. 'What has been exciting to see is dairy prices are hitting an all-time high,' he said. Finance Minister Nicola Willis applauds the regional economic recovery but has to manage the high consumer prices that have followed it. Photo / Mark Mitchell Fonterra may be being naughty, potentially fattening the margins of its consumer products to make that side of the business attractive for sale, but the key driver of those prices is the high value of commodities at the moment – and that's a good thing for the country. You can slightly forgive the Government for not saying this. Celebrating high butter prices does have a Marie Antoinette-ish aspect to it. However, they perhaps did not need to point the finger so vigorously in the other direction. The problem with affordability is only half to do with prices. The other half is wages. While it seems an affront to our identity that people of a dairying nation like ours cannot afford butter, the more serious question is why New Zealand incomes struggle to keep up with those of international consumers who are willing to pay for our products. There's a reason why everyone turns their guns on Fonterra and the farmers for high prices, and that's because it's easier to blame producers than it is to solve the manifold crises that have held back New Zealanders' wages. Act Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour at a rally last weekend. Photo / Alex Burton This browbeating of corporate New Zealand is becoming a coalition issue. Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour had a go at critics of the supermarkets and banks in his rally speech last Sunday. 'It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to give a speech saying they're crooked and need to be punished somehow. They should be taxed somehow, have their businesses broken up, or be watched over by even toothier watchdogs. It's the curse of zero-sum thinking,' he said. The remarks were not just directed at Labour and the Opposition, but at the rest of the coalition, which, since coming into office, has engaged in enthusiastic supermarket bashing. In the backdrop to all of this is a looming cost-of-living decision that will likely be made in the next few months and could have a big influence on the election campaign. In February, Energy Minister Simon Watts and his Associate Minister Shane Jones selected offshore economics consultancy Frontier to be the lead reviewer of the electricity market (the review was announced in November 2024). The terms of reference are bold, saying the firm needed to look at foundational parts of the market such as generation investment incentives, efficiency, and effective wholesale and retail markets. The report came back some weeks ago and is sitting on the desks of ministers. Watts has told media a decision can be expected before the end of September. One idea is to revive Contact Energy's 2021 Thermal Co plans. Frontier has worked with Contact before, writing evidence on the firm's behalf for its proposed acquisition of Manawa. That idea would be for a company, 'Thermal Co', to own, operate and eventually retire the major power companies' thermal generation assets. The price of thermal energy sets the price for the rest of the electricity market. This new entity, potentially with a large Crown stake, would have a large influence over prices and over the incentive for firms to bring forward renewable generation, the only long-term fix to the predicament of high prices. The move would be incredibly interventionist, which is perhaps why NZ First seems so keen on it and why no one in the Act Party seems to know the report is back. National is caught in the middle. It knows something is wrong in the market but wonders whether radical reform is quite what's needed to fix it. After all, six years of radicalism from the oil and gas ban, to the 100% renewable electricity generation target, to Lake Onslow are at least partly responsible for the mess the market's in at the moment. Those decisions were unhelpful. Labour's own appointed working group told the Government in 2019 the 100% target would lead to 'large increases in retail electricity prices from today's levels' and would undermine decarbonisation efforts by putting up prices – advice that turned out to be prescient. Do we really want another few years of radicalism? National may seek to make a virtue out of mild, stable reforms that bring stability to the market and encourage private investment in more generation. The challenge here is that this new generation needs to be in firming and, in the short to medium term, there's a good chance this will involve fossil fuels (Jones floated the idea of a new coal station in the House this week). That's going to be unpopular. Other ideas floating around the coalition include changing ETS settings to reduce the Government-imposed cost of burning coal, a cost that is reflected in the wider electricity price. That might fix one broken market by undermining another. Something needs to happen and not just because high prices are weighing on households. The coalition, or at least the National and Act parts of it, appears ready to campaign on asset sales at the next election. That argument is going to sound a lot less persuasive if the gentailers, part-privatised in the last major asset selloff, are squeezing consumers. Treasury papers gush about the fact that the mixed-ownership companies, Air NZ, Genesis, Mercury, and Meridian, are basically the publicly-owned companies that are performing well. Consumers, feeling fleeced by all of them, probably disagree. And that's the trouble with this economic recovery. It might look okay from the Beehive – even good. The recovery is under way and it's a good one. For once, we are seeing an economic recovery driven by exports and not immigration and house prices, which continue to fall. As Chris Bishop said this week, New Zealand would be a better country were it to 'destroy' the idea that the economy is linked to growing house prices. He's right, the country would be better off if we did. Sadly, the record of the electorate is that house prices, where two-thirds of New Zealand households have stashed the vast bulk of their wealth, seem to be the main indicator they care about. The Key Government, often remembered as a time of relative economic prosperity, presided over years of high unemployment. The unemployment rate didn't fall below 5% until the quarter before that Government was voted out of office. Inflation, however, was almost always below 2% and house prices were rising. House prices made people feel richer. It wasn't good, but it worked – and it wasn't just Key, the Ardern Government turned a blind eye to unsustainable house prices too. Unfortunately for National, this is probably the 'track' many households are keen to get back on – and not the one currently being taken by the coalition. You can hardly blame them for feeling the surest sign of economic recovery is in their own balance sheets. The Government's challenge is to persuade people that its own 'track' is the better one.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Is the Q2 Earnings Bar Set Too Low?
The early Q2 earnings results, mostly from the Finance sector, have been better than expected. Most of these banks and brokers are not only easily beating consensus estimates, but also providing a favorable outlook for the coming periods. Since banks are an economically sensitive sector whose operations touch all types of consumers and businesses, this favorable view of underlying business trends by the banks provides a reassuring read-through for the rest of the Q2 earnings season. Estimates for Q2 had come under severe pressure after the quarter got underway, with the announcement of reciprocal tariffs in early April prompting analysts to materially lower their earnings expectations. The revisions trend stabilized later in the quarter, with estimates for the Tech sector actually nudging up after coming down earlier in the quarter. Estimates had actually modestly gone up for three sectors – Consumer Discretionary, Utilities and Aerospace. Of these three sectors, the favorable revisions trend for the Utilities sector is tied to improving demand trends as a result of AI related demand from datacenters while the positive revisions trend for the Consumer Discretionary sector is solely due to favorable revisions for media players like Disney DIS, Netflix NFLX and others. The magnitude of negative revisions to Q2 estimates has been bigger than most other post-Covid periods. This suggests to us that the bar is likely low enough that companies will easily jump through them. But more than companies' ability to beat consensus Q2 estimates, it will company guidance for Q3 and beyond that will determine the market reaction to the results. For more details about the Q2 earnings season and expectations for the coming periods, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report here >>>Q2 Earnings Season Kicks Off Positively: A Closer Look Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS) : Free Stock Analysis Report SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): ETF Research Reports This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


Courier-Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Courier-Mail
Brisbane's housing market scores silver in the race to be the fastest-selling city
Brisbane's homes are selling so fast that the rest of the country is struggling to keep up. New analysis from Ray White Group has found Brisbane to be the second-fastest selling capital city across the country, and the capital that closest follows ongoing Australian trends. Across Brisbane, 64 per cent of homes sell within 15 to 30 days, beating the national median of 31 days. Meanwhile, 19 per cent of homes sell within the first 14 days of the campaign, meaning 83 per cent of Brisbane's housing market is in a healthy condition. This is only beaten by Perth, where 97 per cent of properties will sell within the first month, with 76 per cent of homes selling in the first 14 days. Ray White senior data analyst Atom Go Tian said despite Perth's 'astronomical' growth, there was a concern it may 'rubberband back' when compared to Brisbane's consistent market. 'Brisbane is unique because it mirrors Australia's trend the most closely,' he said. 'My guess is that the price range of Brisbane is very close, historically, to that of Australia … although [sales times] are faster by comparison.' 'Brisbane's been seeing that jump in population, and that's why the urgency has been faster than Hobart, or Canberra.' The data was gathered from data firm Cotality's monthly indices, observing median sale times and a closer analysis of individual suburb sales within each city. Five suburbs observed within Brisbane all sold within eight to nine days, with prices ranging from $522,500 to $750,000. Overall, Australian homes are slowly spending more time on the market, following the post-Covid housing boom. Brisbane homes were on the market for a median of 18 days in June of 2024, and 21 days in June of 2025, compared to a nation rise of 29 to 31 days. CEO of Ray White Collective Haesley Cush said calmer weather and large migration numbers were both big factors when it came to Brisbane's strong house sales. 'The Brisbane market is in great shape for all the market and infrastructure reasons, but beyond that, the market performs when Sydney and Melbourne don't,' he said. 'You've got a lot of people wanting to buy, so you've got the most pent-up competition.' Mr Cush added that one thing going against the city's appeal was building costs, which have skyrocketed in recent years due to an inability to meet demand. 'With Brisbane, all of the good buttons are sitting there,' he said. 'And the one bad button is the cost to build. Unfortunately for buyers, this is a good button for sellers.'