Mainstream Weekly

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• 50 year Journey of the Barefoot College Celebrates Hidden Abilities and Great Potential of Ordinary People | Bharat Dogra

  18 March 2022, by Bharat Dogra

  The Barefoot College, which has emerged as one of the most creative institutions in the field of rural development, discussed and admired at world level as a symbol of the often hidden but great abilities of ordinary people, particularly women and weaker sections, is completing 50 years of its eventful journey this year. Its experiences are important in the context of its own very creative achievements of course but even more so in the context of the support this provides to the idea of (…)

• Re-imagining Kamathipura | Arup Kumar Sen

  18 March 2022

  The iconic image of Kamathipura as a red- light district in Mumbai/India has a colonial genealogy. Census figures for 1864, 1871, 1901 and 1921 showed larger numbers of prostitutes living in parts of Bombay other than Kamathipura, notably in neighbourhoods populated by working-class Indians, such as Phunuswaree and Girgaon. However, none of these areas were defined as red-light zones. “Kamathipura was the area where European prostitutes first resided, and then were allocated. On the strength (…)

• Hindutva and the Crisis of Public Institutions in India | Bhabani Shankar Nayak

  18 March 2022

  by Bhabani Shankar Nayak *
  Public institutions have evolved in post-colonial India in response to crisis created by colonial plunders. Public institutions led by the state and government were shaped by anticolonial struggles in India. In spite of all its limitations, these institutions were designed to ensure and expand democratic and citizenship rights of all Indians irrespective of their caste, class, gender, religion and region. From planning commission to local development and revenue (…)

• For Naveen, In Ukraine | Sagari Chhabra

  18 March 2022, by Sagari Chhabra

  When my child was born, I named him Naveen – new – a gift of peace to the world. When he wanted to study at Kharkiv, I agreed, thinking he would return with a medical degree; little did I know of geopolitics; the decision of Putin to bomb a land, besiege an entire people, who at first taped their windows with glass, then huddled in subways, aghast; sans food, water, even medicines for the old; I had thought we had sold primitive warfare for the global highway, but all we got was aerial (…)

• Colours | Ajit Das

  18 March 2022

  It was long thirty years back I attained the white-clad widowhood. I didn’t know what it meant for me.
  An air of sympathy initially spontaneous, later on laboured, a feeling of being unwelcome in happy family gatherings, a growing suspicion of treating me inauspicious in rites and rituals – all weaved an uneasy cloak around my persona.
  Gradually I was told to shun all wishes, desires in mundane world, instead to seek bliss of life beyond through spiritual meditation.
  I tried to tread (…)

• Ukraine: Back to Status quo in Europe? | Shrikant Paranjpe

  18 March 2022

  by Dr. Shrikant Paranjpe*
  The Russian intervention in Ukraine can by understood in the context of two concepts, one that deals with the issue of legitimacy of intervention and the other with concerns about national security. The issue of legitimacy traces its source to the process of change that took place in Eastern Europe in 1989. The East European revolution that saw the disintegration and creation of new nation states rested on the foundation of ethnic nationalism based right to (…)

• Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes | Rita Katz

  18 March 2022

  by Rita Katz *
  Not since ISIS have we seen such a flurry of recruitment activity.
  “Hi can you please forward a message since two of us are trying to get a carshare from germany to ukraine going,” reads a Feb. 26 message forwarded to a popular neo-Nazi Web channel.
  “We are 3 french, leaving Strasbourg tomorrow morning with our car,” another message answered. “There is place for 2 german fighters.”
  These are the types of conversations that have flooded Western neo-Nazi and (…)

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  The Russian Federation Should Cease Military Operations on the Territory of Ukraine - International Court of Justice Order regarding Ukraine vs Russia Matter - Text of Press Release of March 16, 202

  18 March 2022

• Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space | The Committee to Abolish Outer Space

  18 March 2022

  by Sam Kriss
  The Committee to Abolish Outer Space
  Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space
  There’s nothing there already.
  We have been lied to, subjected to a cruel and chilly lie, one so vast and total it’s no longer fully perceivable but has turned into the unseen substrate of everyday life. It’s a political lie. They told us that outer space is beautiful.
  They showed us nebulae, big pink and blue clouds draped in braids of purple stars, always resolving themselves at (…)

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  Russia’s War on Ukraine: A Photo of Arrest of an Anti War Protester in Saint Petersburg (2 March 2022)

  18 March 2022

  via: La galera per un fiore. Lotta delle femministe russe |il manifesto