Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Sumit Sarkar and the Craft of Historical Inquiry | Aftab Mohammad

  8 October

  I have always thought of myself as an accidental student of history. While learning its alphabet, I found myself struggling with seemingly simple questions: What is history? How is it written? Why does one write it? Whose account becomes history, and whose remains outside its pages?
  These questions gradually became more concrete. We know about the king, but what about the people he ruled? If the prince is there, where is the peasant? Where are women? Where are workers, artisans and those (…)

• After the Second Congress | A. Losovsky (1923)

  8 October

  Reproduced from Labor Herald. Vol. 1 No. 12. February, 1923
  Debates between Communists and Syndicalists continued to dominate the Profintern’s Second World Congress. Lozovsky reports.
  THE Second Congress of the Red International closed an epoch of the International movement, showing today the difficulties which in the future the world’s labor movement must surmount. This movement is formed of diverse elements with contrasting traditions and opinions which will only disappear during the (…)

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  Bata: A multinational that stole Indian hearts | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  8 October, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW Batanagar: A Personal History of India’s Forgotten Company Town
  by Paramita Sen
  Pan Macmillan India Pages: xxi + 225 It goes to the credit of Bata that it merged so beautifully with Indian ethos that millions for a long time never suspected that it was a multinational from Europe.
  Bata’s quiet birth in India during the British rule, its steady expansion both before and after the country’s independence, and its closeness to the icons of the freedom movement gave the (…)

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  Video: How Capitalism Really Works ? | Anwar Sheikh

  8 October

  Play
  How Capitalism Really Works (with Anwar Shaikh) by Jacobin https://youtu.be/ybUxe5m3nwI?si=X2ip4BBhkEDbXmLg

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  The Green Onions (1967) - Booker T. and MG’s

  8 October

• Are Interstate Migrant Workers in Kerala Really "Guest Workers"?

  20 September, by A. M. Jose, Jos Chathukulam

  Abstract
  Kerala is home to millions of interstate migrant workers whose contributions are indispensable to the state’s economy. While the term "guest workers" was introduced with the positive intention of promoting dignity and respect, this article argues that it is constitutionally inappropriate because it implies that fellow Indian citizens are outsiders. Drawing on the constitutional principles of single citizenship, freedom of movement, and the right to reside and work anywhere in (…)

• Evaluating the Evolution of Ideas and Ideals of University or Higher Education at Large: Which Way Now? | Arup Maharatna

  20 September, by Arup Maharatna

  There can be little doubt that global higher education (HE hereafter), as we know it now, is in a flux. This has increasingly been palpable in a growing plethora of monographs written over several preceding decades, which grapple with what is often described as a crisis of university education or HE at large. Although this concern refers to a wide range of issues including curriculum, pedagogy, governance, finance, equity, and standard and their current trends, the notion and purpose of a (…)

• Kerala CPI (M) in Self-Critical, Corrective Mode at Three-Day Conclave | P. Sreekumaran

  20 September

  September 16, 2026, Thiruvananthapuram: A big salute to the CPI(M)’s lower-level leaders and the party cadres. For, it was their bold, open and trenchant criticism of the leadership which forced the party to go for a change for the better.
  The party’s central leadership, ably led by general secretary M. A. Baby, also deserves full credit for the welcome corrective steps taken at the three-day extended CPI(M) State Committee meeting, which concluded with a massive rally on the beach at (…)

• Rethinking Indian Agriculture: Why Innovation, Not Input Subsidies, Must Drive the Next Green Revolution | Deepa Palathingal and Palak Kunwar

  20 September

  Introduction
  India’s agricultural policy is increasingly caught between two competing imperatives. The first need to focus on feeding the population that is expected to exceed 1.5 billion within next decade. The second is the growing concern over sustainable agricultural practices, soil fertility, clean water, and low crop production. Policymakers have addressed this issue by implementing initiatives to promote natural farming, improve soil health, foster climate-resilient agriculture, and (…)

• Muthanga After Twenty-Three Years: A Verdict and the Long History of Betrayal | K.M. Seethi

  20 September, by K M Seethi

  Twenty-three years after the police action at Muthanga, the court has delivered verdicts on some of the cases arising from one of the most traumatic confrontations between the Kerala state and its Adivasi communities. However, the judgments also reopen a much larger question that no courtroom verdict by itself can settle: who has really been held accountable for Muthanga? The Adivasis who occupied the land have faced prosecution for more than two decades. Their leaders have moved through (…)