Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Diet Drug Pulled After Red Flags | Martha Rosenberg

  9 January 2021, by Martha Rosenberg

  by Martha Rosenberg *
  By now, most people are aware of the US obesity statistics. In 2016, almost 70 percent of US adults were obese of overweight says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That means normal sized people are in the minority. (Some are even considered "anorexics.")
  Today, the average American man weighs almost 198 pounds up from 166 pounds in the 1960s and the average American woman weighs 170 pounds up from 140 pounds in the 1960s. (The trend brings (…)

• Book on Life and work of Karl Polanyi | Edited by Brigitte Aulenbacher, Markus Marterbauer, Andreas Novy, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Armin Thurnher (2020)

  9 January 2021

  The International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS)

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  Video: Monkey Business - a film by Howard Hawks (1952)

  9 January 2021

  Cast: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe

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  Table of Contents - Mainstream, Jan 2, 2021

  2 January 2021

  * How Much of a Democracy is India, Really? | P B Sawant
  * Governorship Is Boring - Power Matters | TJS George
  * Twenty 20, A Dangerous Trend from Kerala| Sukumaran C V

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Jan 2, 2021

  2 January 2021, by SC

  Letter to the Readers – Mainstream, Jan 2, 2021
  Once again we have crossed the doorstep of a new year. The year that we leave behind was one with a difference. Since the time I was born in the mid-1940s, I have never experienced a year of such a grave pandemic as this year, 2020, that took a toll of so many lives. What will the new year, 2021, bring to us? Hope or catastrophe? That is the moot question today. The present does not hold any positive reply although we still hope for the best (…)

• How Much of a Democracy is India, Really? | P. B. Sawant

  2 January 2021, by P.B. Sawant

  Abraham Lincoln defined Democratic Government as a government of, for and by the people. This definition was true to the spirit of the origin of democracy in the ancient Greek city states, where all males above 18 years were participating in the day to day affairs of the government. The essence of democracy is the participation of the people in the day to day affairs of the state. Mere elections are not democracy. The elections become necessary when on account of large populations people (…)

• Governorship Is Boring - Power Matters | TJS George

  2 January 2021, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS Arif Mohammed Khan must be the most frustrated politician in India today. He has been made governor when his own conviction is that he can serve the country best by being a power-wielding minister. He is taking out his frustration on the elected government in Kerala, the state he is ‘governing.’ He seems convinced that he as governor has a political role to play as much as the ministers of the state. Result: An ugly situation that has been saved from becoming a public (…)

• Twenty 20, A Dangerous Trend from Kerala | Sukumaran C V

  2 January 2021, by Sukumaran C.V.

  Kerala may perhaps be the most political state in India. But in the recently concluded local body elections, the people of four panchayats in Ernakulam district of the state proved that Kerala can dangerously be apolitical too. Kitex Garments, the company that pollutes the surrounding water bodies and paddyfields in Kizhakkambalam Panchayat was denied licence by the panchayat governing body 8 years ago. Then, the Kitex Garments-Anna Aluminium group CEO Mr. Sabu Jacob, in accordance with the (…)

• Far from liberating farmers, farm laws put them at the mercy of government | Jean Drèze

  2 January 2021

  Synopsis
  It is, of course, right to make space for regulation in the trade area. The idea that unregulated markets serve the public interest, quite flawed in general, is also odd in the case of agricultural marketing. Unregulated agricultural markets often raise problems related to uncertainty, equity, collusion, quality control, asymmetric information, economies of scale, contract enforcement and abuse of non- economic power, among other possible sources of so-called ‘market failure’. (…)

• The Kashmir valley has rejected PM Narendra Modi’s ’Gram Swaraj’ | Bharat Bhushan

  2 January 2021

  by Bharat Bhushan
  Prime Minister Modi has described the just-completed third tier local body elections to the District Development Councils (DDCs) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) as realisation of Mahatama Gandhi’s vision of “Gram Swaraj”. However, they are hardly likely to satisfy local Kashmiri aspirations for the restoration of basic democratic freedoms or dampen international criticism.
  The DDC’s governance mandate is limited to just five subjects– welfare, health, education, finance (…)