Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Beyond Patriarchy: India Needs Healthy Expressions of Masculinity to Curb Rape Culture | Adfer Rashid Shah

  31 August 2024

  Taking a suo motu cognisance of the gruesome rape and murder of a junior medic at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital on August 9, 2024, The Supreme Court of India’s timely assertion on August 20, 2024, is seen as a beacon of hope for women’s safety especially doctors’ safety in hospitals. The junior doctor was found dead at a seminar hall of the medical college on August 9 while the autopsy confirmed that she was raped and murdered. The heinous incident sparked nationwide outrage and protests with (…)

• Boko Haram Kidnappings in Nigeria | Abdul Rehman, Karamala Areesh Kumar & Sounak Ghosh

  31 August 2024

  In recent years, there has been an increase in kidnappings in Nigeria by various groups to use this as a tool for money. Since 2014, kidnapping has become frequent in Nigeria, especially in the Northwest and North-Central parts of the country. Initially first kidnappings were carried out in 2014 by Boko Haram which kidnapped 276 students from a girl’s school in Borno state. Since then, this tactic has been used by various groups and criminal bandits who do not have any ideological (…)

• Reshaping India with disdain for humanity | Humra Quraishi

  31 August 2024, by Humra Quraishi

  29 August 2024 How many more homes will get bulldozed in the country? How many more abodes will get ruined and demolished and destroyed? I am of the opinion that bulldozing of homes is a barbaric rejoinder to crime, where not just the supposed or alleged or suspected culprit is punished but his or her entire clan. And in the latest case in Rajasthan’s Udaipur, even the landlord’s home wasn’t spared! Was there any valid justification of bulldozing the landlord’s home, whose tenants were (…)

• The Inegalitarian Regime of NFS (Not Found Suitable) and Discriminatory Lateral Entry | Amit Kumar

  31 August 2024

  A new phrase is getting traction in the academic circle, politics, and the de facto category of ’Not Found Suitable (NFS)’ in Indian universities across India. Indian academics are known for their brutal discriminatory practices in the interview and the selection processes in order to deprive and discriminate against the candidates belonging to the reserved classes in the name of dubious concepts like merit, objectivity, and institutional independence’ ever since the public money funds these (…)

• Wider Lessons of the Debt Crisis of Pakistan | Bharat Dogra

  31 August 2024, by Bharat Dogra

  A PTI report in The Times of India published on August 24, 2024, stated that Pakistan is in talks with banks in the Middle East to borrow approximately USD 4 billion to meet its external financial commitments for the current fiscal year. For the current fiscal year, Pakistan has pitched about USD 20 billion in foreign borrowings in the budget, besides another USD 3 billion rollover from UAE that was reported separately in the balance of payments. The IMF indefinitely postponed the approval (…)

• How human rights are disappearing before our eyes | Suhas Chakma

  31 August 2024

  August 28, 2024
  The moral distinction between liberal democracies and dictatorships is being flattened by the carnage in Gaza.
  For most of human history human rights did not exist.
  The struggle to secure them arguably began in 1215 with the Magna Carta in England, which promised protection from illegal imprisonment as a right.
  But it took another 733 years and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for those rights to be enshrined for all.
  Now, just 76 years later, they’re at (…)

• Narendra Modi’s search for opportunity in disasters!! | Suresh Kahairnar

  31 August 2024, by Suresh Khairnar

  This is the mantra given to BJP by the current Prime Minister! Which he said in March 2020 during the first wave of Corona! When at that time no medicine for Corona had been invented! And due to it being a completely new disease, there was an atmosphere of panic in almost the entire world!
  But this mantra was used by Narendra Modi in the initial phase of his political life after 27 February 2002. Without half-hearted post-mortem, the 59 half-burnt bodies of the Godhra incident were handed (…)

• What the Indian Left should learn from Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxist-Humanism | Murzban Jal

  31 August 2024

  by Murzban Jal
  I am certainly glad I live other than an academic life.
  — Raya Dunayevskaya,

• What is driving the largest women-led rights movement in Balochistan’s recent history? | Abdullah Zahid

  31 August 2024

  On the annual International Day of the Disappeared, 30 August, a look at how the Baloch community in Pakistan is being pushed to the wall but also ignored by the state. Their marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations do get some attention, but little seems to change.
  By Abdullah Zahid / Sapan News
  The International Day of the Disappeared, observed on 30 August annually, holds particular relevance to Pakistan’s Khyber PakhtunKhwa and Balochistan provinces, plagued by enforced (…)

• 

  Text of Citizens Statement Against Sexual Violence From Kilkata to Manipur, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Bihar, UP . . .

  31 August 2024

  WOMEN RIGHTS NOW!
  CITIZENS SPEAK OUT AGAINST BRUTAL CASES OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE FROM KOLKATA TO MANIPUR, GUJARAT, UTTARAKHAND, BIHAR, UTTAR PRADESH…
  DEMAND URGENT, INDEPENDENT AND UNBIASED INVESTIGATIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY!
  NO MORE SHIELDING OF PERPETRATORS AND THEIR PROTECTORS JUSTICE TO VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES!
  August, 2024
  Amidst distressing news of brutal rape cases coming from multiple states, women’s rights groups were joined by mass organisations, trade unions, (…)