Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Oct 21 & Oct 28, 2023

  21 October 2023

  Israel’s War on Gaza is laden with risks and implications for our hyperconnected world. The October 7 attacks by Hamas inside Israel and the subsequent military operation by the Israelis on Gaza sent a wave of (pro-Modi Government, pro-right wing) journalists to Israel from big TV networks in India and they have over the past week been broadcasting high-decibel Israeli propaganda to TV viewers in India. None of these Indian journalists have gone into the Palestinian territories of Gaza and (…)

• Assault on the Media: Subversion of Democracy | Arup Kumar Sen

  21 October 2023, by Arup Kumar Sen

  In his address on a public occasion in March 2023, the chief justice of India, D Y Chandrachud, argued: The media is the fourth pillar in the conception of the State, and thus an integral component of democracy. A functional and healthy democracy must encourage the development of journalism as an institution that can ask difficult questions to the establishment – or as it is commonly known, “speak truth to power” …The press must remain free if a country is to remain a democracy. (See The (…)

• Ethnicity Will Matter In Mizoram Polls | Papri Sri Raman

  21 October 2023, by Papri Sen Sri Raman

  FIVE STATES IN India will hold elections in November to select their governments, just six months before the country heads to general elections to decide on the colour of the Union government. The smallest assembly among these States is Mizoram’s, with 40 seats. So, let us begin our overview with this north-eastern State, south of strife-torn Manipur. To understand Mizoram, we cannot ignore all that happens in Manipur, nor can we discount the fact that Mizoram is a State with two (…)

• Diaspora Dynamics: India’s Global Footprint | S N Tripathy

  21 October 2023, by S N Tripathy

  The evolving political influence of the Indian diaspora in the global context signifies a remarkable transformation in India’s approach towards its overseas citizens. Traditionally, India maintained a non-interference policy in other countries’ internal affairs, treating its diaspora as citizens of their host nations. However, this perspective has undergone a significant shift, with the diaspora now recognized as a strategic asset for India’s economic and diplomatic interests. This (…)

• Nandini Satpathy: a moderniser who changed the political map of Odisha | Radhakanta Barik

  21 October 2023, by Radhakanta Barik

  Nandini was born into an illustrious family in Odisha. It was a family of intellectuals and writers. Before independence, this sort of family was the rarest of rare ones in Odisha. Her father and other uncles were writers. All of them were humanists and wrote of the common man’s sufferings. Her father Kalindi Panigrahi perhaps was an outstanding writer. He was a story writer and novelist and poet. He has written poems for children to elder people. His novel Matir Manish is a unique one. It (…)

• The Average Indian Farmer is turning more of a Laborer today - Situation Assessment Surveys of Agricultural Households | S S Sangwan

  21 October 2023

  The composition of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in India has undergone continuous changes wherein the share of agriculture especially crop production has been continuously reduced from 42 % in 1970-71 to about 23 % in 2000-01 to about 14 % in 2020-21; whereas, the share of crop production in GDP has come down to around 10% ((GOI, 2021a). These changes may have percolated in the sources of personal Income of various sections of the society, especially Agricultural Households (AHHs). The (…)

• Problems of Working Class Colonies in Delhi | Bharat Dogra

  21 October 2023, by Bharat Dogra

  Problems of working-class colonies in Delhi get very little attention in the city’s media, but as recent visits to three such colonies revealed, these can be very serious.
  What is common to all these three colonies is that the earnings of most households do not allow them to have any savings as with great difficulty they can only manage the essential expenses. Hence any period of extended unemployment caused by illness, injury (including occupational injury which can be frequent), lockdown (…)

• Pakistan: Women’s Action Forum (WAF) calls for immediate ceasefire to stop the genocide in Gaza

  21 October 2023

  PRESS STATEMENT
  19 October 2023, Islamabad, The Women’s Action Forum (WAF) strongly condemns the brutal, indiscriminate, and incessant assault by the Israeli occupation power on the Gaza Strip. Intensified attacks by Israel that began on 7 October 2023 have reportedly killed nearly 3,000 people including about 700 children and injured more than 10,000 people. The horrifying bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital is a devastating part of the continuum of violence that adds to compelling evidence (…)

• Palestinian Knesset Member: World Must Act to Stop Netanyahu’s Rampage in Gaza | Jake Johnson

  21 October 2023

  "Those of us who are Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel are uniquely positioned to see through his bluster and warmongering to the failure he really is—truths that the past several days have laid bare."
  Oct 19, 2023
  A Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset took to the pages of The New York Times on Thursday to call for global action to end the deadly siege of Gaza and prevent far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from using the ongoing conflict as an opportunity to permanently (…)

• Israeli-Hamas war: Need for a wider understanding | P.S Jayaramu

  21 October 2023

  19th October, 2023
  Quite understandably, global attention continues to be single-mindedly focussed on the inhuman killing of spectators in a music concert in Gaza by the Hamas group recently. Nearly 1400 Israeli nationals were killed and thousands injured in the Hamas attack, leading to a strong military response by Israel.
  Condemnable as Hamas’s violent actions were, the issue needs to be understood from a wider international and regional perspective that characterises the larger (…)