Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Sunderlal Bahuguna will always be an inspiration for efforts to protect forests | Bharat Dogra

  21 May 2022, by Bharat Dogra

  Sunderlal Bahuguna, the person most closely associated with the movements and campaigns to protect Himalayan forests, died one year back in Rishikesh at the age of 94.
  His first death anniversary is being observed on May 21, Saturday.
  The veteran environmentalist and Chipko (hug the trees) was also a freedom fighter and regarded Mahatma Gandhi as his most prominent teacher and mentor. He devoted his life to applying principles of non-violent struggles in the context of increasingly (…)

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  Open letter from the sanitation workers to the residents of Chennai

  21 May 2022

  Open letter from the sanitation workers of ‘Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board’ to the residents of Chennai (16.05.2022):
  Dear Chennai residents,
  Be it summer or drought, cyclone or flood, festive time or disaster time – if it were not for us, Chennai would not be inhabitable. We contribute immensely in giving form to our rulers’ sky high fantasies such as ‘Singara Chennai’, ‘Clean India’, ‘Smart City’ etc. Even when everyone else was confined to their homes during the (…)

• Indigenous 6G: can India pull it off? | Manoj Harjani

  21 May 2022

  by Manoj Harjani
  India is planning to launch a nationally-developed 6G network, despite falling behind in its 5G network rollout. But don’t count it out just yet.
  India’s road to 5G has been a bumpy one. In 2018, the country’s Department of Communications laid out a roadmap in its National Digital Communications Policy for a 5G rollout by 2022. Following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Commercial 5G services are now expected later this year or in early 2023.
  Despite the delay, the (…)

• Why is India on the verge of an unprecedented power crisis? | Tarun Kumar Basu

  21 May 2022

  by Tarun Kumar Basu
  The energy crisis appears to be intensifying. Several states across the country are suffering protracted blackouts as scorching heat waves boost energy demand. The country’s electricity demand touched a record high in April as nearly three in four of country’s 1.35 billion people tolerated the hottest pre-summer months in decades. After the lockdowns were lifted, the reopening of the manufacturing units increased the demand for power to a great extent. It is not new (…)

• On Muslims and Muslim Politics | Arup Kumar Sen

  21 May 2022, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Some stereotyped images of Muslims and Muslim politics have been built in the public discourse by ideologues of Hindutva and the mainstream media in India. A recent book, Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islams in India (Penguin Viking, 2019), by Hilal Ahmed deconstructs such popular images of the Muslim community.
  While answering some imaginary questions in his book, Hilal Ahmed enlightened us about the Muslim community and their politics. How do we make sense of the Muslims of India? (…)

• Religious Issues Cover Up The Governance Failure In UP | Arundhati Dhuru and Sandeep Pandey

  21 May 2022, by Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey

  Uttar Pradesh’s Director General of Police Mukul Goel has been removed from his post for disregarding government work and not taking interest in departmental duties. Quite obviously not everything has been alright with UP Police department.
  On 1 May police raided the house of Kanhaiya Yadav in Manrajpur village of Chandauli district and when they left the house a 22 years old girl Nisha was found hanging from a ceiling fan. The younger sister Gunja described how brutally both girls were (…)

• Right-Wing calls the shots . . | Humra Quraishi

  21 May 2022, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS - 18 May 2022
  Last week news reports focused on Right-Wing brigades holding arms training camp in Karnataka. This is not the first time there’s been such a blatant display of arms and training of the young. Almost five years back, news-reports had detailed that VHP and Bajrang Dal were holding arms training camps in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida, Varanasi, and in several other locales, where the young were getting trained to attack the ‘enemy’- dummies of skull capped men! Yet no (…)

• Sino-Indian Border Dispute & Arunachal Pradesh | Pranjit Agarwala

  21 May 2022

  by Pranjit Agarwala *
  2022 began on an ominous note for Sino-Indian relations. On 1st January China again renamed 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh claiming it as “Zangnan, the southern part of Tibet”. China has been routinely intimidating India with such false claims despite India’s strong protests. India and China share a 3488 km long border. The border is demarcated by the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which is divided into three sectors: the Eastern sector covering (…)

• Pick a Wave | Badri Raina

  21 May 2022, by Badri Raina

  O citizen, un-besotted by zeal, Un-fathered by the state, Between the heat wave And the hate wave Take your pick; Torched by the two now Smoulders the captive republic.
  Neither the all-out sun nor the bellowing Saint knows the pinch Of price rise. Once the Gorgon has spouted, What son of woman May blubber otherwise.
  Have you no work, have you no food, No plaster for the broken bone, No cooking oil, nor firewood, No sympathetic microphone That may your throttled syllables To the lord of (…)

• The Police State | Radhkanta Barik

  21 May 2022, by Radhakanta Barik

  (The agencies of state be CBI, Police or ED and drug control authority are very powerful to create a police state)
  The sky Full of stars They do not give light The moon is there But its light does not fall on us A writer writes But words do not create ripples Poet creates a powerful metaphor But it does not reach people We look at the folk story Once there was a king Whose rule we enjoyed He has been turned into a god Now People worship it Forget his rule We have new rulers (…)