Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Climate Change and Workers / Push for Labour Law Reforms—Intelligent Market Arguments, but Poor Social Sense!

  30 April 2016

  May 1 is the International Workers’ Day. The following two articles are being published on that occasion.
  Climate Change and Workers
  by Bharat Dogra
  It is now well known that life in the near future can be acutely and adversely affected by climate change. Despite this, very few efforts have been made to have an understanding of the impact of climate change on various sections of vulnerable workers. Here an attempt is being made to form a preliminary understanding of the impact of (…)

• Report of Fact Finding Team of Editors Guild of India on Attacks on Media in Bastar (Chhattisgarh)

  30 April 2016

  DOCUMENT
  The Team:
  1. Prakash Dubey, General Secretary
  2. Seema Chishti, Executive Committee Member
  3. Vinod Verma, Executive Committee Member
  Places of Travel:
  Jagdalpur, Bastar and Raipur.
  Dates of Travel:
  March 13 to 15, 2016.
  Terms of reference:
  To verify and assess:
  • Recent reports of the arrests of journalists in Chhattisgarh;
  • The threats and challenges faced by journalists in the State;
  • The challenges to the profession of journalism.
  Summary
  The (…)

• CPM in West Bengal: A Moment of Truth

  30 April 2016, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Now that elections to the West Bengal State Assembly are in full swing, it is a ‘moment of truth’ for the present ruling party there, the Trinamul Congress, led by CM Mamata Banerji. It is thus instructive to ponder over what N.C. had written about the erstwhile ruling party in the State, the CPI-M, headed by the late CM, Jyoti Basu, and its functioning more those 25 years ago. Incidentally, the same CPI-M now has an electoral understanding with the Congress, (…)

• On Politics in West Bengal

  30 April 2016, by Arup Kumar Sen

  West Bengal is witnessing Assembly elections in a novel perspective. The CPI-M-Congress alliance is the main contender of the TMC in the present elections. Rather than making a critique of their past deeds, the CPI-M has left no stone unturned in forging an alliance with the Congress for electoral gains. Other than ousting the Mamata Banerjee-led government, the CPI-M has not offered any substantial argument in support of the alliance. The most blatant thing they did was to give the (…)

• Reflections on Consent

  30 April 2016, by Gilbert Sebastian

  “[W]hen we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.” — Simone de Beauvoir1
  The age of consent in rape cases in India was raised from 16 years to 18 years through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013. It led to many eyebrows being raised and not surpri-singly so since the global average of the age of consent still (…)

• The Kohinoor Story

  30 April 2016, by Kuldip Nayar

  A party which expects everyone to wear nationalism on one’s sleeves made the most anti-national statement. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that the Kohinoor diamond was “offered” by Dalip Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s son, to Lord Dalhousie and it belongs to Britain.
  The angry comments following the statement made the party realise its mistake and it changed its stand abruptly. It said that the Kohinoor belonged to India and would be brought back through talks with the British. (…)

• Bharat Mata ki Jai

  30 April 2016

  by P.C. Jain
  It has been a special characteristic of the BJP that it has been surviving and seeking power through the catch phrases or slogans on which they become fetish and aggressive from time to time. At one time it was protection of cow (Gau-mata), at a later stage it was Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Now it is Bharat Mata ki Jai. Nationalism and patriotism of their concept are being thrust upon the people and those who do not agree with their interpretation are dubbed as anti-national and (…)

• Ambedkar and his Vision of Socialism

  30 April 2016

  by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
  Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (April 14, 1891-December 6, 1956) was not a socialist in the typical term though he had an inclination towards evolutionary socialism; he developed his own ideas and emerged a socialist in his own way. He dissected the economic inequality and exploitation in an empirical manner. His socialism is innovative and indigenous as he analyses the exploitation of the people within the country with a social world approach. It is pragmatic, not (…)

• Beyond JNU : Rising Above Scandalous Chauvinism and Fake Secularism

  30 April 2016

  by Diptendra Raychaudhuri
  Many years ago, I went to Punjab to cover an election held in the backdrop of terrorism tearing apart peace and prosperity of the State. That was in 1992. I was young, still not 30, and my perceptions about the world and India, about politics, about different developments, were mostly in black and white. The Khalistan movement was bad and anti-national, and I assumed anyone having sympathy either for the movement or for those who joined it were all anti-national (…)

• Comprehending Indian Politics from Indira Gandhi’s Last Term as PM

  30 April 2016

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Amna Mirza
  Autumn Of The Matriarch: Indira Gandhi’s Final Term In Office by Diego Maiorano; Publisher: Harpercollins Publishers India; 2015; 261 pages; Price: Rs 599.
  History has narratives and as great historian Santayana said, ‘Those who ignore mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.’ In a similar vein, it also becomes important to question what history has to offer and whether any ideation was hitherto uncovered. It is one thing to learn history by (…)