Mainstream Weekly

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  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Jun 1, 2026

  1 June

  * The Strange Myopia of West Bengal CPI(M) | Aditya Nigam
  * Is the INDIA Block dying? | Faraz Ahmad
  * Kerala’s Agrarian Crisis and the Search for an Ecological Future | Jos Chathukulam & A. M. Jose 16775
  * The Intellectuals | Anton Pannekoek (1935)

• Guest Editorial: The Strange Myopia of West Bengal CPI(M) | Aditya Nigam

  1 June, by Aditya Nigam

  It must have sounded bizarre to those who do not keep abreast of political developments in West Bengal that the BJP chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, thanked the CPI(M) for helping him defeat Mamata Banerjee by transferring votes to him. Adhikari made this statement to the press even as counting was still going and widespread complaints of opposition counting agents being thrown out of counting rooms were coming in.
  For people living in the state however, this connection between Ram (the (…)

• Is the INDIA Block dying? | Faraz Ahmad

  1 June, by Faraz Ahmad

  Is INDIA Bloc alive or has Rahul Gandhi dug its grave and put it to rest forever. So it seems, and worse the Congressmen specially those two power hungry Congress MLAs in Tamil Nadu Assembly who became ministers in this very suspect TVK government are gloating about it. Never mind that they have entered the Tamil Nadu assembly on the shoulders of its leader and outgoing chief minister M.K. Stalin.
  The Tamil Nadu Congress had laid a precondition before offering the support letter to Vijay (…)

• Whither Indian Politics post-Bengal and Tami Nadu Results ? | P S Jayaramu

  1 June, by P S Jayaramu

  May 25, 2026
  Now that the dust and din of Assembly election results are settled and new governments have become functional, it is time to reflect on tbe state of Indian Politics.
  Firstly, let me start with the emergence, nay steady consoliation, of the BJP’s hold over Indian Politics. Unmistakably,the Party is trying to establish its one party dominance (OPD) system over the Indian political horizon, though I must hasten to add that it is truly not yet so, as four South Indian states are (…)

• The Cockroaches Have Arrived | Kaleem Ullah Fasihi

  1 June

  In Daniel Evan Weiss’s satirical novel, ‘The Roaches Have No King,’ a colony of besieged and hungry cockroaches, ignored by the humans who cohabitate their apartment, launches an elaborate campaign to reclaim the space that power had sealed off from them. The premise is absurdist fiction, but the instinct it describes is not. Perhaps the Chief Justice of India thought that the calling of the unemployed youth of the country ‘cockroaches’ by him in the open court on May 15 this year would be (…)

• Assembly Polls (2026) in Kerala:
 Spectacular Show by the UDF | M. R. Biju

  1 June, by M. R. Biju

  [( Abstract Kerala verdict 2026 undoubtedly shows that no party can afford to take people’s will for granted. The verdict is a clear reply to the perceived arrogance of the CPI(M) leaders and the intolerant behavior of the Chief Minister. The LDF in general and CPI(M) in particular failed to respect the sentiments of ordinary people. The common man’s agenda was simple one, to teach the ruling LDF a lesson. During the two term LDF rule they could render reasonably fair governance in the (…)

• A Life’s Journey with the Constitution of India | Arup Kumar Sen

  1 June, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Very recently, Indira Jaising, the eminent legal practitioner in the Supreme Court, has expressed her thoughts in her conversations with Ritu Menon, the noted feminist writer and publisher. The conversations have been incorporated in the book titled – The Constitution is My Home: Conversations on a Life in Law (Harper Collins Publishers, India, 2026).
  In the Author’s Note, Indira Jaising stated: “Over the past six decades of my legal career, not a single day has passed without my entering (…)

• Irrespective of Who Wins—The Corrupt Power-Nexus Remains | Sreedeep Bhattacharya

  1 June

  During every election season, media attention fixates on candidates, campaign strategies, shifting vote banks, and volatile results. Far less attention is paid to the enduring architecture of corrupt power that survives regardless of electoral victories or defeats. This entrenched nexus—comprising politicians, capitalists, bureaucrats, criminals, and influential rural strongmen—operates through the calculated distribution of favors, contracts, and patronage to protect shared economic and (…)

• How Swachh Bharat Mission fails to capture the reality of untreated sewage and deadly sanitation labour | Amit Kumar

  1 June

  Abstract:
  The article exposes how India’s biggest sanitation drive, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), fails to address the safe management of sewage and faecal sludge. It leads to the persistence of hazardous working conditions for workers while cleaning the sewer and septic tanks. Additionally, it pollutes the environment due to lack of proper treatment facility. Further, the article explores deeper flaws in the existing Open Defecation Free (ODF) classification framework under the Swachh (…)

• Beyond Paper Leaks: The Deeper Crisis of NEET | Adama Srinivas Reddy

  1 June, by Adama Srinivas Reddy

  The recurring controversies surrounding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) are no longer merely about examination malpractice. Repeated allegations of paper leaks, impersonation rackets, irregularities and abrupt cancellations point to a deeper structural crisis in India’s education system. Unless this crisis is understood beyond the narrow framework of policing and surveillance, such scandals will continue to recur.
  After every leak, the official response follows a (…)