Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• SIR: The Mega Assault on "India" : The Story So Far | Sukla Sen

  1 November, by Sukla Sen

  Prologue
  AA. Early Warnings:
  I/II. Make no mistake.
  It’s an attempted mega-assault on the "India" that was brought into being by the epic Indian freedom struggle on August 15 1947, the day when the shackle of foreign colonial rule was finally shaken off.
  Arguably, the most major as yet.
  Universal adult franchise, along with "free" election, every five years or so, is one of the very cornerstones of the Indian political system — its much vaunted, even if flawed, electoral (…)

• Bhagwat just a puppet of Ventriloquist Modi | Faraz Ahmad

  1 November, by Faraz Ahmad

  For long fellow journalists have been reassuring us sceptics that it is the Rashtirya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) which will soon unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Man Friday Union Home Minister Amitbhai Shah for the two are becoming a liability to the RSS.
  I have never taken this bait and the latest Vijay Dashmi address of RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat has only proved me right insofar as it showed how Bhagwat faithfully echoed whatever said or did.
  Mohan Bhagwat’s traditional (…)

• Public Debt is Not Just about Numbers: It Is About Institutions Too | Sagnik Bagchi and Sayantan Bandhu Majumder

  1 November

  Abstract
  In the last decade and a half, public debt has surged globally, and the World Bank classifies it not as a debt wave but rather a “tsunami”. This article attempts to underscore the importance of a country’s formal and particularly quality of informal institution in shaping its sovereign debt. Our results reveal that countries with better-quality formal institutions need not necessarily manage debt well, but stronger informal institutions, in the form of social trust, are of pivotal (…)

• The Jevons Paradox: From Damodar to Teesta | Sujit Choudhury

  1 November, by Sujit Choudhury

  Keywords : Damodar, Teesta, Jevons Paradox, Energy Economy, Sustainable Development, Hydroelectricity, DVC, Jharkhand, Sikkim
  Jevons Paradox
  Damodar and Teesta are two important rivers in eastern India, although they are from two very different eras and geographies of India. The Damodar rises from the ancient Chotanagpur Plateau and flows eastward across the Gangetic plains before joining the Hooghly River. The Teesta, in contrast, originates from the glacial mountains of the Himalayas, (…)

• Autonomy Undone: Symbolic Subordination and the Fragility of Tribal Self-Governance in Meghalaya

  1 November, by Jos Chathukulam

  Abstract
  The practice in Meghalaya whereby Chief Executive Members (CEMs) of the state’s three Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) are sworn into office by District Commissioners (DCs) of their headquarter districts points to a significant disjuncture between constitutional design and administrative practice. The Sixth Schedule envisages ADCs as autonomous institutions of self-governance, vested with legislative, executive, and judicial authority. However, the ritualized precedence (…)

• Women, Work and the Daily Commute: Insights from the NHTS | Vandana Sehgal

  1 November

  The National Statistics Office (NSO) has recently released the factsheet of its first-ever National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). The survey covers more than 4.9 lakh households for the period July 2025 to June 2026. The survey aims at providing information on how people actually move: where they travel, how far, by what means and at what cost. The factsheet highlights that two-wheelers are the single largest primary mode of transport for workers across India, accounting for 42.6% of (…)

• Protecting Worker Interests in the Daily Labour Markets | Yatish Kumar

  1 November

  INDIA OCCUPIES A strategic position in the global workforce market due to its skilled workforce, and an expanding consumer market. India’s growth underpins GDP growth performance in Southern Asia, ‘a sub-region whose GDP is said to have grown by 6.2 per cent in 2024 and by 5.8 per cent in 2025’. Worldwide, over 61.20 per cent of employment, more than 2 billion people, is in the informal economy (ILO, 2018).
  The majority of India’s workforce operates within the informal sector, where the (…)

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  Music: Ain’t Got No - I Got Life | Nina Simone

  1 November

  Play
  Ain’t Got No - I Got Life (Single Version) by Nina Simone - Topic https://youtu.be/1eUKC3xcj8Q?si=51p0rU1nWAWy3l-p

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  Video: 2nd Sitaram Yechury Memorial Lecture by Romila Thapar (Oct 25, 2026)

  1 November

  Play
  Second Sitaram Yechury Memorial Lecture : LIVE from HKS Surjeet Bhawan by CPIM Speak https://www.youtube.com/live/X5z-TJB_G-8?si=xl-1IObno8ccYD1y

• Issues after 60 years’ Growth Story of Haryana | Sher Singh Sangwan

  1 November

  Haryana is one of the fastest-developing states of India, and it has been politically vibrant too due to its location around the National Capital. It was carved from erstwhile Punjab on 1st November 1966 and at that time, its territory was relatively lagging in agriculture, industry and even services from the combined Punjab But after becoming a separate state, its growth rate has surpassed most of other states, including neighbour Punjab, due to the octopus spirit of some of its (…)