Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The state as political form of capitalism | Divya Rashmi

  25 August

  El Salvador incarcerates 1 percent of its citizens, Argentina’s recent legislation allows employers to pay wages in goods, and India’s labor regulations redefine "essential service" widely enough to make most strikes illegal. The state power that got built under these regimes was not what was promised. These governments bypassed traditional legislative constraints using executive-driven emergencies, omnibus deregulation, and labor reclassification to dramatically expand state authority over (…)

• From Sankara to Traoré: Historical Embodiment and the Unfinished Revolution in Burkina Faso | Nagender Madavaram

  25 August

  Introduction
  Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s rise to power in Burkina Faso has generated intense debate across Africa and beyond. To many Africans, especially younger Pan Africanist audiences, he appears as a patriotic soldier who inherited a collapsing state and chose sovereignty over submission. To his critics, he is a military ruler using revolutionary language to justify the consolidation of power. Aina captures [1] this ambiguity by asking whether Traoré is Burkina Faso’s saviour, dictator, (…)

• The Infrastructures of Domination, Circulation Is the New Exploitation | Hojat Ghalandari

  25 August

  17 August 2026
  Consider the Strait of Hormuz. A narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it carries roughly one-fifth of global petroleum supply. Any disruption there-a seized tanker, a mine, a military escalation-sends immediate shockwaves through oil prices, shipping insurance, stock markets, and geopolitical alliances. Why does a single waterway have such enormous leverage over the global economy? The answer reveals something fundamental about how capitalism itself (…)

• Daniel Ortega: A revolutionary who once held promise | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  25 August, by M R Narayan Swamy

  In the hour when I saw him in the Nicaraguan capital addressing fellow Sandinistas, I did not imagine even fleetingly that he would one day trade his revolutionary credentials for a political dictatorship sans elections. For someone who won millions of hearts for boldly spearheading an armed struggle against the American-backed Anastasio Somoza, it is painful that he is now being compared to the very despot he helped overthrow in 1979.
  It was an epoch-making event, in American’s own (…)

• Manufactured Certainty: When Absolute Logic Serves Capital | K. Sahadevan

  25 August, by K. Sahadevan

  When we evaluate complex systems such as biological systems through the lens of absolute logic and general scientific principles, we often lose sight of the intricate interconnections that sustain them. By focusing exclusively on isolated components rather than on the systems that emerge from their interactions, official institutions propose solutions that fail to grasp the whole. Popular movements gain relevance precisely by recognizing that this approach is no accident: such “scientific” (…)

• The Tyranny of Outcomes: Bureaucracy, Productivity, and the Crisis of Meaning | Yavor Tarinski

  25 August

  04 May 2026
  One may well ask oneself if there exists a single sphere of public or private life where the very spring-heads of activity and of hope have not been poisoned by the conditions under which we live. —Simone Weil[1]
  In capitalist societies what matters most is the outcome. Some speak of Cult of Productivity, others of Achievement Society, but the core beneath the various names used is the same — a deeply bureaucratic logic that aims at classifying, measuring, and (…)

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  AITUC Statement on the Supreme Court’s Jai Bir Singh Judgment | Aug 21, 2026

  25 August

  All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC)
  Press Statement:
  21st August 2026
  Supreme Court’s Jai Bir Singh Judgment: Concerns of labour shall Not Be Buried Under Judicial Reformulation
  All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) takes serious note of the Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme Court in State of U.P. v. Jai Bir Singh concerning the definition of “industry” under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
  While the majority has retained (…)

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  Letter to the President of India - Request to return the MMDR bill 2026 to parliament for reconsideration

  25 August

  Loktantrik Rashtranirman Abhiyan
  Smt. Draupadi Murmu H. E. the President of India New Delhi
  Sub: Request to return the MMDR bill 2026 to parliament for reconsideration.
  Esteemed Madam,
  Loktantrik Rashtranirman Abhiyan requests Your Excellency to return to the Parliament for reconsideration the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026, which is now awaiting your assent.
  It is extremely harmful to the federal structure of our polity as envisioned in the (…)

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  How Erdogan Turned Turkey into a Fiefdom | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  25 August, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW From Life Itself Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan
  by Suzy Hansen
  Profile Books When you read a political biography of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you feel you are discovering modern-day dictators around the world. It is not a surprise that he once boasted: “Now there are only two experienced leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”
  American journalist Suzy Hansen also puts Erdogan in the same bracket as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – men who insist on (…)

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  Music: Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Bombay, India, 1963

  25 August

  Play
  Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Bombay, India, 1963 | Music Diplomacy Archives by U.S. Department of State https://youtu.be/j2PHiNA1ziw?si=DqzTIdNPDsKQiL_u