Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Cremations Don’t Matter When PM-Cares | TJS George

  23 April 2021, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Two contrasting scenes of shame hit India last week. One was people dying in Ahmedabad in numbers the City’s crematoriums could not handle. Where 20 bodies were the norm in the past, 80 were arriving now thanks to Covid. Surat’s biggest crematorium used to attend to 30 bodies a day. Now it was forced to cremate 110 a day. (There were reports that the state government was hiding the true death rates.) A body now has to wait for a minimum of eight hours before it can (…)

• West Bengal Assembly Elections: The myth of Bengali Exceptionalism | P S Jayaramu

  23 April 2021

  by P.S. Jayaramu
  Of all the Assembly elections this time round, the ongoing polls in West Bengal has attracted extraordinary attention by politicians and analysts from the academia and media. The television channels are giving unusual space to the political extravaganza because of the high stakes involved for the principal contenders for power, the BJP which is out to capture Bengal and the TMC wanting to retain its fortress. By all accounts, the contest seems bipolar with the other (…)

• What Happened at Sitalkuchi in West Bengal? | Arup Kumar Sen

  23 April 2021, by Arup Kumar Sen

  In the fourth phase of assembly elections in West Bengal on April 10, 2021, Sitalkuchi Block in the district of Cooch Behar witnessed brutal violence unleashed by the Central forces. MASUM, a human rights organization, documented this brutal State violence in its fact-finding report, and communicated it to the National Human Rights Commission (April 12, 2021). To put it in the words of the Report:
  “At about 9.35 am, a 14 year old physically challenged boy, Master Mrinal Haque...was hit by (…)

• CISF Killings in Sitalkuchi In the Backdrop of an old story, I know | AK Biswas

  23 April 2021, by A K Biswas

  The Bihar Assembly Elections, 1995 were conducted in various phases to ensure free and fair poll under adequate security cover. The Election Commission of India, converted into a multi-member body in 1989, comprised three retired IAS officers with T. N. Seshan, a former Cabinet Secretary, as the presiding deity. As the Chief Election Commissioner, Seshan’s motto was “to act ruthlessly to ensure free and fair election” in exercise of “the powers vested in me.” And he built up his reputation (…)

• Has Traditional Higher Education Been Unduly Elitist? | Arup Maharatna

  23 April 2021, by Arup Maharatna

  by Arup Maharatna*
  It is far from the case that those, who are in the habit of calling our present times in various teleologically smart names such as ‘age of mass media’, ‘knowledge society’, ‘virtual age’, ‘post-truth society’ or ‘age of fake news’, are all very sure, or know well enough, of what exactly they are talking about. I am deeply sceptical as to how many of those, who frequently call our present age as one of ‘mass media’, are genuinely aware of the havoc being caused by its (…)

• Excerpts from Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir | Kobad Ghandy

  23 April 2021

  Publisher: Roli Books (Roli Books Pvt Ltd, M-75, Greater Kailash II, Market, New Delhi - 110048) | First edition (16 March 2021) | Language: English | Hardcover: 316 pages | ISBN-10: 8194969166 | ISBN-13: 978-8194969167 | Available here
  __1__
  BOOK EXCERPTS:
  Dedication
  This book is dedicated to my late wife Anuradha, fondly called Anu, in whom I saw all that was good in society. Her commitment to truth and justice and her idealism could dispel the darkness of a benighted world. (…)

• Death of a Poet/ Intellectual: Sankha Ghosh (1932-2021) | Arup Kumar Sen

  23 April 2021, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Sankha Ghosh, the eminent Bengali poet, teacher, critic and public intellectual died on April 21, 2021, after being tested positive for Covid-19 a week ago.
  Other than his identity as a legendary Bengali poet, uniqueness of Sankha Ghosh lies in the fact that as an exemplary teacher at Jadavpur University he inspired several generations of students inside and outside the classroom. Moreover, he was an authority on Rabindranath Tagore, and his writings on different creative dimensions and (…)

• Cry, Afghanistan | Apratim Mukarji

  23 April 2021, by Apratim Mukarji

  Who are the happiest people in today’s Afghanistan where the United States has just announced its determination to get out of its “longest war”? No prize for guessing correctly. Barring the Taliban who have only succeeded in tightening up their fearsome history and image, nobody else, nobody else including those Afghans who preside over the non-Taliban segments of Afghan society, including those in the civilian and elected government, is happy and looking forward to a peace deal to bring to (…)

• Afghanistan: US exit is with caveats | M K Bhadrakumar

  23 April 2021, by M K Bhadrakumar

  April 22, 2021
  The United States and NATO are yet to begin the withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan but the eyes are cast over the horizon at what lies after the ‘forever war’ formally ends. The US exit strategy in Afghanistan assumes the look of that random arbitrariness of a lottery that was the case with its Iraq war ending inconclusively in 2011.
  Evidence is piling that the US president Joe Biden’s declaration of April 14 on total troop withdrawal by September 11 may not be (…)

• The 73rd Constitutional Amendment in Jammu and Kashmir and Experiences of Functioning of ’Panchayats’ From Other States | Farooq Ahmad Bakloo

  23 April 2021

  by Farooq Ahmad Bakloo*
  Abstract
  During the abrogation of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, it was stated that this change will empower the Panchayati Raj in the erstwhile state. However, the question is what about the states that have non-special status as in article 370 since independence. What is the position of the Panchayati Raj institutions in these states? The studies across the country revealed these Panchayati Raj institutions are sunk in a lot of problems even in those states (…)