Mainstream Weekly

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• The ’Dharitri Youth Conclave 2021’: In search of ecological citizenship | Bhabani Shankar Nayak

  3 December 2021

  by Bhabani Shankar Nayak *
  The progressive Odia daily newspaper ’Dharitri’ has organised ‘Odisha Youth Conclave on Climate Change’ while celebrating its 48th birthday on 24th of November 2021. In a profit-driven mass media industry with its rent-seeking family ownerships, it is rare these days for newspapers to think about people and planet. The ’Dharitri’ and its family deserves all appreciation for being different and carrying forward the alternative visions for a better tomorrow based (…)

• Congress and Left Parties Should Consider an Alliance in Some States | Bharat Dogra

  3 December 2021, by Bharat Dogra

  The political situation in various states or provinces of India can differ. The analysis presented here is mainly in the context of the following states—Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Punjab, Haryana,Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. These states are mainly located in North and Central India where Hindi is commonly spoken, even though this may not be the main language in all the states. Some of these states are due for Assembly elections next year.
  In these (…)

• Indira Gandhi: A nation builder with some flaws | P S Jayaramu

  3 December 2021

  by P S Jayaramu *
  20th November 2021
  Indira Gandhi’s 104th birth anniversary passed off quite unnoticed. While it is understandable that the BJP led Government would not attach any significance to it, the Congress Party too was subdued in observing it. To the best of my knowledge, no national newspaper carried any editorial or article as a mark of her birth anniversary on19th November. Is Indira Gandhi fading away in the national imagination?
  While it is well known that Indira was (…)

• Nehruvian Secularism: A Critical Appraisal | Shubham Sharma

  3 December 2021

  by Shubham Sharma *
  Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of independent India. A romantic at heart he was a puissant anti-colonial nationalist who saw British colonialism as the chief contradiction plaguing India. It was deliverance from it that mattered to him the most. And it was to fulfil this goal that he dedicated his life to without much fanfaronade.
  Nehru’s era was that of the twilight of colonialism wherein the colonial empires were on the wane and the anti-colonial (…)

• On Suspension 12 MPs from 255th Session of Parliament | Statement by Binoy Viswam (MP), Nov 29, 2021

  3 December 2021, by Binoy Viswam

  Binoy Viswam Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) 116, North Avenue New Delhi - 110 001 Mob: 96057667022 E-mail: binoyviswam55[at]gmail.com
  Statement issued by Binoy Viswam, Leader of CPI Parliamentary Group & Secretary, National Council on Suspension from 255th Session of Parliament
  The Government has once again showed its authoritarian and dictatorial face as it suspends 12 Members of Parliament, including myself, for the events that occurred on 11th August 2021 during the 254th (…)

• Primitive Accumulation in Neoliberal Times | Arup Kumar Sen

  3 December 2021, by Arup Kumar Sen

  ‘Primitive Accumulation’ is a seminal theoretical concept used by Karl Marx to trace the genesis of capitalism. He characterized it as “an accumulation which is not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its point of departure”. The history of primitive accumulation includes “those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled onto the labour-market as free, unprotected and rightless proletarians”. Again, to put it in (…)

• Observations on Caste and the Peasant question in present-day India | Arup Baisya

  3 December 2021

  by Arup Baisya * The dynamics of social categories are based on their creation and recreation within the garb of overarching social reality. The caste-identity has a sui generis characteristic in Indian society. The social time of caste is deeply related to the sociality of caste and defines the kind of social experiences that are shared by members belonging to a given ‘Jati’. But the changing dynamics of shaping and reshaping of the caste identity need to be assessed in the context of the (…)

• Double Standards…All The Way! | Humra Quraishi

  3 December 2021, by Humra Quraishi

  IMPRESSIONS
  December 1, 2021
  Double standards are spreading out. The latest, of course, is this: We have made stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui sit in a corner but the Right-Wing Hindutva lot roam about freely and fearlessly, mouthing the unthinkable obnoxious stuff! No, they have not been made to sit shut in a corner because they are directly or indirectly connected to the ruling lot.
  We have harassed and hounded this comedian, who has no political brigades to come to his rescue. (…)

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  Emergency Transforms a Revolutionary | M R Narayan Swamy

  3 December 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  The Struggle Within: A Memoir of the Emergency
  by Ashok Chakravarti
  HarperCollins India
  July 2021
  221 Pages; Price: Rs 399
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354227473 __0__
  A young man jettisons his dream to do PhD in Oxford and returns to India in the summer of 1973 filled with Marxist enthusiasm to bring a revolution in the country. Although Indira Gandhi was hailed as a Durga only two years earlier after breaking up Pakistan, a failing economy had sparked unrest all (…)

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  Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Samyukta Kisan Morcha’s Call for United Struggle | Nov 27, 2021

  3 December 2021

  The following statement was issued to the press jointly by the CTUs and SKM today, 27.11.2021:
  Joint Platform of CTUs and Samyukta Kisan Morcha’s Call for United Struggle:
  Mission India: To Save the People and Save the Nation
  The joint meeting of the Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Federations/Associations and Samyukta Kisan Morcha was held on 25th November 2021.
  The Joint meeting while noting the continuing united struggles of the Trade Unions as well as under the (…)