Mainstream Weekly

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  Tanya Goyal. Review of Ohman, Carl, The Afterlife of Data

  6 December 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care
  by Carl Ohman
  University of Chicago Press
  2024. 200 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-82822-0
  __0__
  Reviewed by Tanya Goyal (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
  The internet never dies

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  Video Report: Understanding France’s special brand of state secularism, ’laicit

  6 December 2025
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  Music: Red River Valley - Billy Vaughn

  6 December 2025

  Play
  Red River Valley by Release - Topic https://youtu.be/nHzDct-EU44?si=HAwuD8M22hMJsRGF

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  Table of Contents, Mainstream, Nov 29, 2025

  29 November 2025

  * Few Questions To those who, during the Bihar election campaign, tarred Lalu Prasad Yadav years in Govt as "Jungle Raj" | Suresh Khairnar
  * The Importance of Being Hidma | Kobad Ghandy
  * The spectral presence of Christians in Indian politics | John Dayal
  * The

• Few Questions To those who, during the Bihar election campaign tarred Lalu Prasad Yadav years in Govt as "Jungle Raj" | Suresh Khairnar

  29 November 2025, by Suresh Khairnar

  This photograph is from 1992. Lalu Prasad Yadav had become Chief Minister of Bihar for the first time in 1990 after the elections that followed the 1989 Bhagalpur riots. Soon after he took over, when news arrived of riots breaking out in Sitamarhi during the Durga Puja idol immersion, Lalu Prasad reached Sitamarhi from Patna by helicopter in the darkness of night itself. The moment he landed, he walked through the lanes of Sitamarhi on foot, appealing to people to restore peace. If this was

• 2025 Bihar Assembly election results: Chacha Paltu Ram can no more shake off Modi

  29 November 2025, by Faraz Ahmad

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a far-sighted strategist for his party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has, with the much-needed proactive assistance of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar Gupta, achieved in the just concluded Bihar assembly elections, what the BJP had only been dreaming of but never really imagined to achieve.
  First and foremost, he has clipped the wings of Chacha Paltu Ram and reduced him to a mere puppet on the Sanghi string. Nitish Kumar kept hopping from BJP

• Pluralism or Partisanship: India

  29 November 2025, by Albert Smith

  Democracy demands magnanimity in victory and dignity in defeat. These values are fast eroding in our political landscape. Amidst this decline, Justice B. Sudershan Reddy, the India Bloc

• The spectral presence of Christians in Indian politics | john Dayal

  29 November 2025, by John Dayal

  by John Dayal
  There are hardly any Christian MPs and MLAs in India other than those elected on a political party ticket from Kerala, Andhra, Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka, Goa, Orissa and the tiny-population north east states of Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal and Manipur.
  There are almost none in the Hindi states of the Central and northern parts of India. The exception are a very few Adivasis of the Chhotanagpur contiguous belt. The total number of ministers in the Union (…)

• The Importance of Being Hidma | Kobad Ghandy

  29 November 2025, by Kobad Ghandy

  It was the late 1990s. Anu, my late wife, had just returned from spending 3 years in Bastar with the armed guerrillas. She would often say it was the best years of her life, though it took a toll on her health, finally leading to her death. Though her arthritic knees gave her much problems and she would regularly stumble over the rough terrain, she was much loved by the simple tribals. Having picked up a spattering of Gondi (she would say it was akin to Tamil), she would talk at length of (…)

• Triumph And Tragedy of India

  29 November 2025, by Aswini K Ray

  Viewing the Indian news media now, it is difficult to imagine, that Operation Sindoor is still operational, with only a ceasefire. But its occasional sparks, and aftereffects, in different spheres of life in the country remind us of the original fire: as in the cricket prize ceremony in Dubai, and the on-going struggle for the trophy after victory ; or, the uniquely crude assertion of resurgent Sanatani Hindutva in the Court room of India