Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• 

  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Jul 30, 2026

  30 July

  * The 100-year Project: Planned Steps to Subvert Education | Papri Sen Sri Raman
  * The Jantar Mantar Protests Were All About Accountability | Indira Jaising, Pratik Patnaik
  * Scientists Exodus, A Loss For ISRO, Gain of Private Sector | Soma Marla
  * Four Years After NEP 2020: What AISHE 2023–24 Reveals About India’s Higher Education | Sunit Singh

• The 100-year Project: Planned Steps to Subvert Education | Papri Sen Sri Raman

  30 July, by Papri Sen Sri Raman

  GUEST EDITORIAL
  Like a flock of passing locusts clouding the sky of prosperity for the farmer, perhaps revolution came and left… the destruction it left in its wake is a template for the uncertain future of protest politics, the rise of ‘ridicule’ as a political strategy and the loss of fear as tool of governance. For now, democracy has survived. Won? No.
  Unlike Asian neighbours Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, the Jantar Mantar protest has, however achieved far less than what the media (…)

• Hindutva got the cracks in its pyramid | Radhakanta Barik

  30 July, by Radhakanta Barik

  Modi and Shah Regime are based on fear and suppression of masses. Modi felt himself the king and Shah is commander in chief. Both showed cruelty towards the citizens of India. They started campaign of hatred against the Muslims and they used bulldozer against the innocent people. Modi Shah brought the public property into the market for auction. It is carefully crafted in such a manner that all these public properties have gone to Adani and Ambani. Education has been pushed to medieval times (…)

• The Jantar Mantar Protests Were All About Accountability — A Must For Education Bodies, Police Forces And Courts | Indira Jaising, Pratik Patnaik

  30 July

  July 28, 2026
  ‘kaise akash mein surakh nahin ho sakta, ek patthar to tabiyat se uchhalo yaaro’ –-Dushyant Kumar
  They Lifted A Book and made a hole in the sky.
  Remember the young woman in Mumbai who stood with her arms flung wide and brought a police van to a halt? Remember the young woman at Jantar Mantar, thin from many days without food, lifting the Constitution of India above her head, not in anger, but in the way one lifts a lamp.
  For weeks they had been told to lower it, to fold (…)

• The Cockroaches Came Together | Varna Sri Raman

  30 July, by Varna Sri Raman

  A judge’s insult became a political party, a sit-in at Jantar Mantar, and a march on Parliament that met lathis and tear gas on the first day of the Monsoon Session.
  Underneath the satire sits an examination agency that has produced two leak scandals in three years, and a labour market that offered 8,868 railway posts to 1.22 crore applicants.
  The student crowd is the oldest recurring actor in Indian politics, and the state’s playbook against it has changed less since 1974 than the (…)

• Four Years After NEP 2020: What AISHE 2023–24 Reveals About India’s Higher Education | Sunit Singh

  30 July

  The Government launched the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2020. The policy promised a lot of things: no more rigid single-subject degrees, the start of 4-year undergraduate courses, multiple options to exit and enter college without losing credits, and a massive jump in the number of students getting higher education. But promises on paper are one thing, and ground reality is completely different. The Ministry of Education recently released the All India Survey on Higher Education (…)

• Reading Brutal Assertion of State Power in New Delhi | Arup Kumar Sen

  29 July, by Arup Kumar Sen

  On July 20, 2026, New Delhi witnessed brutal assertion of state power against the young protesters. The Hindu reported (July 21, 2026): “Several people were injured…when the police cracked down on a Parliament march called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) seeking the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan… At least 38 of the injured were taken to the Lady Hardinge Medical College and around 65 to the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, with fractures, swellings, and head (…)

• How sincere is Modi in putting education back on rails? | Faraz Ahmad

  29 July, by Faraz Ahmad

  The first non-Congress governments were formed in many states after the fourth general elections in 1967 and in Delhi Jana Sangh was elected to the Delhi Metropolitan Council, an advisory body with considerable powers to run the Delhi Administration. Late Vijay Kumar Malhotra, then a young Jana Sangh leader from West Delhi became the chief executive councillor and in his capacity as Leader of the House, he appointed L.K. Advani as the Chairman of the Council, the first non-elected chairman (…)

• The Unbroken Thread: How Today’s Youth Movement Builds on Shaheen Bagh and the Farmers’ Protests | K. Sahadevan

  29 July, by K. Sahadevan

  We are witnessing a youth movement that began in the capital and is gaining strength day by day, spreading to different parts of the country while inspiring hope and aspiration among all those who believe in democracy. Sparked by examination irregularities, it continues to draw more students and young people, particularly from the middle class, along with increasing support from India’s liberal intelligentsia.
  There is no doubt that this is a youth-led movement of a kind rarely seen in (…)

• The Waning Sting of Sangh Parivar’s Smears | K. Sahadevan

  29 July, by K. Sahadevan

  For nearly a decade, the RSS and other Sangh Parivar organisations have systematically deployed a campaign of smear and slander against individuals and groups who dare to protest the Modi government’s policies perceived as anti-people.
  Through a pliant section of the media, they have sought to humiliate critics by branding them with convenient labels: “anti-national,” “Tukde Tukde Gang,” “Urban Naxal,” “Khan Market Gang,” “Andolanjeevi,” “libtard,” and “sickular.” Even journalists who (…)