Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Hate Speech in India: How to Promote Amity? | Ram Puniyani

  1 March 2024, by Ram Puniyani

  India has been ruled by Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for the last one decade. BJP in turn is progeny of RSS, which has a goal of Hindu Rashtra. It has many progeny, hundreds of associated organizations with lakhs of volunteers (Swayamsevaks) and thousands of senior workers called Pracharaks (Propagators). It has been pursuing its agenda of Hindu Nation with double the speed since BJP came to power at the center. Rise of BJP on electoral battlefield is due to intensifying of (…)

• Gender Justice in Education - a Peek Into Indian Schools | Mrinmayee Mandal

  1 March 2024

  ’Gender Justice’ is a wide term that takes in its sweep every facet of life. For centuries, in fact ever since known history, we have been living in a patriarchal (with some notable exceptions) and feudal society which assigns to women a subordinate position in the social hierarchy. To begin with, on a very simplistic note, we can look at the two words – “gender” and “justice” separately first.
  Unpacking Gender
  “Gender” in the most layman understanding is way of referring to the social (…)

• Bicycle and Women’s Liberation | T. Vijayendra

  1 March 2024, by T. Vijayendra

  [published on March 8, 2024]
  Bicycling and Feminism
  One hundred years ago, Alice Hawkins, a suffragette, cycled around Leicester (UK) promoting the women’s rights movement, causing outrage by being one of the first ladies to wear pantaloons in the city. During the fight to win the vote the bicycle became not only a tool but also a symbol for the emancipation of women.
  The American civil rights leader, Susan B Anthony, wrote in 1896:
  "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I (…)

• International Court and Justice in Gaza (Report of a Public Meeting held in New Delhi, 23 February 2024) | Indians for Palestine

  1 March 2024

  “When do you say it is a genocide? When do you intervene? Do you wait until a certain number of people have been killed? Is there a threshold? (Adila Hassim, counsel for South Africa versus Israel in the ICJ)
  Indians for Palestine, a group of concerned citizens, convened a public meeting in New Delhi on 23 February 2024 to discuss the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Gaza and to extend solidarity to the people of Palestine. Participants included representatives (…)

• All the perfumes of Arabia will not remove the taint of Bhopal disaster | Gopal Krishna

  1 March 2024

  One is saddened by the departure of Fali S. Nariman, a noted nonagenarian jurist without donating to the Bhopal disaster victims the legal fees which Union Carbide Corporation/Dow Chemicals Company, a US multinational company paid him, to erase the taint of Bhopal disaster. Prof. Upendra Baxi’s advice in this regard is recorded in Nariman’s autobiography-Before Memory Fades. Notably, Nariman also represented asbestos companies. Carcinogenic Asbestos is banned in 70 nations. Its safe and (…)

• How automation will shape future of work in India | Anita Hammer

  1 March 2024

  Automation could reproduce informal and precarious work rather than transform existing trends.
  February 27, 2024
  A dystopia of job loss and surveillance or a utopia of transformation and progress: This conundrum sums up the intense debate around automation and its impact on the future of work. Optimistic narratives about progress from the Fourth Industrial Revolution are juxtaposed by predictions of a bleak future, where robots and automated processes lead to mass casualization, (…)

• Towards civil liberties and a union of minds in Southasia

  1 March 2024

  The peoples of the region must push their governments into urgently coming together around climate change and promoting the core value of empathy, agreed participants of Southasia-focused panels at the World Social Forum

• The World Social Forum: The counterweight to the World Economic Forum | Isabel Ortiz

  1 March 2024

  KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 23 2024 (IPS) - This week the 2024 annual meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Nepal. There were fifty thousand participants from over 90 countries, exchanging strategies to address the multiple global crises, from climate catastrophes to unfettered capitalism, inequality, social injustice, wars and conflict.
  The WSF was created in 2001 as a counterbalance to the elitism of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF, founded and chaired by a private (…)

• Against Hindutva’s appropriation of Indian radicals such as Bhagat Singh and Sahajanand | Jairus Banaji

  1 March 2024, by Jairus Banaji

  Against Hindutva

• Afghanistan: UN expert calls on international community to prioritise human rights of Afghans in any ‘normalisation’

  1 March 2024

  United Nationa Human Rights
  Press releases
  29 February 2024
  GENEVA (29 February 2024) – The deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan two and a half years on is causing unacceptable suffering, a UN expert said today. He called for urgent action by the Taliban and the international community to halt this downward spiral and give hope to Afghans.
  “Women and girls are being erased from public life, peaceful dissent is not tolerated, violence and the threat of violence are used (…)