Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bangladesh: Looking Back | Sumit Chakravartty

  23 April 2021, by Sumit Chakravartty

  In the post-independence history of our sub-continent, 1971 occupies a prominent position. That was the year in which the pernicious two-nation theory which led to the vivisection of our vast landmass in 1947 was given a complete burial with the liberation of East Pakistan (rechristened as Bangladesh) that was situated thousands of kilometres away from its parent territory Pakistan in an artificial arrangement somewhat unique in the world.
  Sometime ago this year, one had written in these (…)

• Buoyancy & Focus in Budgets of Haryana and Delhi During 2014-2021 | Sher Singh Sangwan

  23 April 2021

  by Sher Singh Sangwan*
  Budget is not only a financial plan for a defined period, normally a year but it is known to greatly enhance the success of any financial undertaking or a government. Government budgets are more dynamic than that of individual or firm as the former has authority to mobilize additional resources as per the objective/election manifesto of the party in power. Keeping in view this broad meaning, this paper discusses the budgets of Haryana and Delhi where two different (…)

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  Zookeepers in the Cold War | Samantha Clarke

  23 April 2021

  J. W. Mohnhaupt. The Zookeepers’ War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War. Trans. Shelley Frisch. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. Illustrations. 261 pp. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5011-8849-7; $17.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5011-8850-3.
  Reviewed by Samantha Clarke (McMaster University)
  Published on H-Socialisms (April, 2021)
  Journalist J. W. Mohnhaupt’s captivating and engaging narrative throughout The Zookeepers’ War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War explores the (…)

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  Alam on Siddharth Singh’s The Great Smog of India

  23 April 2021

  Book Review
  by Md Mashhood Alam *
  The Great Smog of India by Siddharth Singh
  2018, 262 | ISBN: 9780670091171
  Penguin Random House India
  Air pollution in India is one of the critical issues that concerns our daily lives. Every winter from October to the last week of December most part of northern India in general and Delhi, in particular, is engulfed under a black smog and haze, what Siddharth Singh calls ‘The Great Smog of India’, largely due to stubble burning in Delhi’s (…)

• Ambedkar - A multi-faceted personality | Sharat Poornima

  23 April 2021

  by Sharat Poornima *
  “We are Indians, firstly and lastly” - Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
  Dr. Ambedkar was a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional personality. Popularly known as Babasaheb, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was an eminent educationist, a great economist, an able administrator and a radical social and political thinker of his time. He was a versatile personality who wrote on such diverse subjects as anthropology, sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, law, history and politics. He is also known (…)

• Communist Party of Soviet Union Politburo Session About the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident - Anatoly S. Chernyaev’s Notes 1986 July 03

  23 April 2021

  1986 July 03
  Chernyaev’s Notes from the CPSU Politburo Session. About Chernobyl
  GORBACHEV: Who approved building Nuclear Power Stations (NPS) in densely populated areas? Do you remember the discussion about it in Kommunist (no. 14, 1979)? But then they gagged Academician Dollezhal. We should not let people scorn us, the Politburo [later]. Now the main priority is the safety of nuclear power stations.
  I also remember another thing: the article in Pravda on the 30thanniversary of (…)

• Chernobyl still burns | Rashid Alimov

  23 April 2021

  23 April 2020
  Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, the fourth reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. 34 years later, Chernobyl radioactivity is still circulating. The long-lived radionuclides released by the accident mean the disaster continues decades on.
  The wildfires started on April 3rd, due to abnormally hot, dry and windy weather. They are now the biggest fires ever recorded in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. What is one of the largest wildlife areas in (…)

• Taking nuclear vulnerabilities seriously | M.V. Ramana & Benoît Pelopidas

  23 April 2021

  by M.V. Ramana and Benoît Pelopidas
  August 06, 2020
  All nuclear-weapon states have admitted to the possibility that deterrence could fail
  Seventy-five years ago, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by one single atomic bomb. Three days later, a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Those two bombs killed over 2,00,000 people, some of them instantaneously, and others within five months. Another 2,00,000 people or more who survived the bombings of these two cities, most of them (…)

• India’s Nuclear Policy: From National Security to Energy Security | Debasish Nnady

  23 April 2021

  by Dr. Debasish Nnady*
  Abstract
  India’s nuclear policy has been evolved with a lot of controversy and challenges. India has changed its nuclear policy after being attacked by China twice in the 1960s. One of the basic reasons for India’s move towards manufacturing nuclear bombs and its peaceful testing for national security. India has been maintaining the policy of nuclear deterrence theory in dealing with Pakistan. This paper intends to delineate the reasons behind the changing (…)

• Modi government making all out efforts to break the farmers’ movement | Arun Srivastava

  23 April 2021

  by Arun Srivastava
  Even before the farmers give a new dimension to their movement and take it to a new height, the Modi government is getting ready to strike at them. Narendra Modi and his close aides are just awaiting for May 2, the day on which the Election Commission will announce the results for the five state assemblies. Of all the states the main focus and concern of Modi has been the results of the West Bengal. A win will show the real change (asol paribotan) of the face of Modi (…)