Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Aug 31, 2024

  31 August 2024

  * How the RSS is using the Kolkatta rape case to mobilise | Arun Srivastava
  * What the Indian Left Should Learn from Raya Dunayevskaya | Murban Jal
  * Text of Citizens Statement Against Sexual Violence From Kiokata to Manipur, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Bihar, UP . . .
  * Hema Committee Report on various issues faced by women in cinema (Dec 2019)

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Aug 31, 2024

  31 August 2024

  Letter to the Readers
  India remains a conservative society is also reflected in the stance of our lawmakers across the political spectrum. On August 27, 2024, the Himachal Pradesh Assembly passed a bill brought in by the ruling Congress Party raising the marriage age for women from 18 to 21 years. This is a socially regressive move that mimics a bill proposed earlier by the Modi Government (The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021) but which lapsed. The age of marriage for (…)

• RSS is using the R G Kar rape case to deepen and expand its base across the country | Arun Srivastava

  31 August 2024

  by Arun Srivastava
  West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was trolled and ridiculed for taking out a rally on August 16 in Calcutta demanding stringent punishment to the perpetrators of the horrid crime of rape on a trainee girl medic. A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to protect the dignity of women and asked the state governments to take action against these elements.
  While the conscience keepers, liberal intellectuals and academics questioned the moral authority of (…)

• 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 (…)