Mainstream Weekly

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  Table of Contents - Mainstream, July 1, 2023

  1 July 2023

  * Modi Rule vs Nehru’s Era: Comparing the Incomparable | Arun Kumar
  * How to Draw a Line on the Ground | Ravi Sinha
  * Punjab’s Economic Development Undersiege | Singh & Shergill

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, July 1, 2023

  1 July 2023

  Letter to the readers, Mainstream, July 1, 2023
  It may be difficult to recall a moment from India’s political and administrative history when a region was gripped by violence & conflict and the Prime Minister of the country maintained pin drop silence. The summer 2023 ethnic strife in Manipur has gone on for two months causing 130 deaths, with hundreds of properties destroyed, some 200 tribal villages burnt and more than 300 churches burnt, over 4000 arms robbed from state armouries by (…)

• Modi Rule vs Nehru’s Era: Comparing the Incomparable | Arun Kumar

  1 July 2023, by Arun Kumar

  Mr. Modi entered tenth year of his rule over India as PM on May 26. Nehru passed away 59 years back as PM on May 27. Mr. Modi has been highly critical of Nehru. Worse, he implies that India has only progressed in the last 9 years under his rule. This propaganda has gone deep down and is accepted by his followers. The BJP highlighted Mr. Modi’s achievements on the occasion while the Congress Party issued a booklet questioning them.
  BJP claims, it has grown the economy, expanded road, rail (…)

• Summer 2023 Ethnic Violence in Manipur is an All Out Attack on Shared Culture | Radhakanta Barik

  1 July 2023, by Radhakanta Barik

  I as a teacher had students from Manipur and friends teaching in DU and JNU, IGNOU, and Jamia have an understanding of Manipur. I have visited the state and found women merchants in the state to cater to the needs of others. Four months back I evaluated a thesis written by a woman scholar belonging to Kuki community and argued that in their community women are taking to trade and business like the Meitei community. It is a good development. Some time back as a teacher in School of Planning (…)

• Decoding ‘Paschimbanga Dibas’ | Arup Kumar Sen

  1 July 2023, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Very recently, a controversy has cropped up in the public sphere in West Bengal in the light of the decision of the West Bengal governor, C. V. Ananda Bose, to celebrate ‘Paschimbanga Dibas’ (‘West Bengal Day’) on June 20, 2023, as the State’s foundation day. The governor did so, honoring the advisory for the commemoration of Foundation Day of States, communicated by the Government of India on May 11, 2023. It should be mentioned in this connection that the Chief Minister of West Bengal, (…)

• How to Draw a Line on the Ground | Ravi Sinha

  1 July 2023

  Comments for the Washington DC Diaspora Program on “Karnataka Election Outcome and the Two Contesting Ideologies”
  by Ravi Sinha
  I must begin with a disclaimer. I am no expert on how elections are won or lost. Nor can I claim any competence in deciphering an election result for what has worked and what has not. I will not be offering, therefore, any fresh insights into the results of recently concluded Assembly elections in Karnataka beyond what is already well-known from the media (…)

• CPM’s 34-year rule in West Bengal (Part 2): Party Machinery, State Terror and Control on the People | Kobad Ghandy with inputs by Raktim Ghosh and Bonhihotri Hazra

  1 July 2023, by Kobad Ghandy

  (This Part 2 of ’CPM’s 34-year rule in West Bengal’, Part 1 is available here )
  by Kobad Ghandy with inputs by Raktim Ghosh and Bonhihotri Hazra
  The CPIM party machinery was all dominating in the West Bengal state during their rule. In every social, political, cultural and even in personal matters the CPIM ‘dada’s’ interference was a must. Initially they began with some attempts at land reform but slowly that too degenerated into the old structures that existed earlier. It all started (…)

• Narendra Modi Overlords a Mafia Raj | Sandeep Pandey

  1 July 2023

  Narendra Modi’s United States visit has made big news. In his seventh trip to that country as the Prime Minister he has been able to get himself invited as a state guest for the first time, riding on the back of a proposal from an Indian private company Air India to buy 220 aircrafts from another U.S. private company Boeing.
  However, just as Narendra Modi was preparing to travel to U.S. there was news about the Gujarati couple Pankaj and Nisha Patel, who in exchange for Rs. 1.5 (…)

• Tasleema Nasreen and Islam | Justice Katju

  1 July 2023, by Justice Markandey Katju

  Islamophobia has been whipped up in several parts of the world, and there are many persons who have severely condemned Islam e,g. Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, etc.
  Among these critics of Islam is Tasleema Nasreen, the Bangladeshi doctor who had to flee from Bangladesh into India due to fatwas against her and death threats from religious extremists. Even in India she was given threats in West Bengal and attacked in Hyderabad. She then lived in Sweden for some years (…)

• Lysistrata: through a feminist’s lens | Pragya Ranjan

  1 July 2023

  by Pragya Ranjan *
  Chronicle of Feminism or Subversion through transgression?
  ‘There is no truth, only perception of truth’, and that perception too changes with time. Lysistrata is one such text where this difference of perception prevails. Written by Aristophanes in 411 BCE, Lysistrata is one of the eleven Old Greek Comedy plays surviving out of forty-two. The play revolves around the Peleponnesian war, when women have to stay at home while their husbands are at war. Lysistrata, the (…)