Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• LETTER TO THE READERS - Mainstream, October 24, 2020

  24 October 2020

  Unbridled exercise of power comes at a price and we are witnessing it every day within and outside the government.
  With the overwhelming dominance of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre and its governments in many States and a large footprint across India, there is a new political culture of concentrated power and its misuse at play. The government of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister in 2014 and later again in 2019 no longer relies on support from regional political (…)

• Domestic workers in Maharashtra in the High Court | Sujata Gothoskar

  24 October 2020, by Sujata Gothoskar

  It is by now widely acknowledged in many circles that domestic work is work that is crucial to the maintenance and reproduction of society and yet is the most neglected area of work and is not even officially recognised as work. In the recent pandemic, while some work like that related to the health care sector was at the forefront of social and economic life, other work like auto or garment production almost ground to a total halt all over the world. One sort of work that was slowly and (…)

• Bihar politics turning to uncharted path | Arun Srivastava

  24 October 2020, by Arun Srivastava

  by Arun Srivastava
  Many things are happening for the first time in Bihar. This was for the first time the Unuion Finance Minister openly offered free coronavirus vaccination for all in the form of bribe to the voters of Bihar, it is also for the first time in the electoral political history of Bihar that election manifestos or “Sankalp Patra” of political parties have become topics of discussion and discourses in the social circle. The discussion is not confined to the living rooms of (…)

• Extremist thinking and the spectre of sedition | Vappala Balachandran

  24 October 2020

  by Vappala Balachandran *
  October 15, 2020
  While the Justice JN Patel-led Bhima Koregaon Commission is yet to finalise its report, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a 10,000-page charge-sheet on October 9. The NIA felt that it was a ‘plot to damage the state’. Several civil rights activists and academics were charged for the gravest offences against the state, including arms training. Among them is 83-year-old Jesuit priest, Stan Swamy. A stunned Jharkhand Chief Minister (…)

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  Reason Wounded, Justice Insulted—Do Not Implicate Distinguished Women Scholars and Activists in False Cases | Bharat Dogra

  24 October 2020, by Bharat Dogra

  Letter to the Editor sent by Bharat Dogra
  I am sure that countless readers share the shock and distress which I felt on reading the statement by participants of the Mahila Ekta Yatra, published in the Mainstream dated October 17, regarding the mention of several of these women participants, known for their deep commitment to communal harmony, in the charge sheet filed in the context of communal riots in Delhi. It is a shocking and truly dystopian situation if women who take great risk to (…)

• Double Standards in Politics | Barun Das Gupta

  24 October 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  Bye-elections for 28 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh are going to be held on November 3. If the Congress wants to come back to power, it has to win all the 28 seats. So the challenge for the Congress is high. Tempers are naturally running high. But what the Congress veteran and former MP chief minister Kamal Nath said in an election meeting was in very bad taste. He ridiculed the BJP candidate of that constituency, a dalit woman, as being an “item”. Item is not an abusive or derogatory (…)

• BJP’s Poll Promise of Free COVID Vaccine for Bihar Violates Model Code and is blatantly Partisan | S N Sahu

  24 October 2020, by S N Sahu

  The promise of free COVID vaccine to the people of BIhar as item no one in BJP election manifesto 2020 makes it the first political party in India to politicise the vaccine issue. Such gross decision making the vaccine a poll and election matter for seeking votes constitutes nothing short of a callous approach to deal with a pandemic which has flattened the curve of health, human and human security. Right since the month of March 2020 BJP has adopted a narrowly self-serving approach in (…)

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  A Masterpiece on India’s Missing Soldiers | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  24 October 2020

  by M.R. Narayan Swamy
  BOOK REVIEW
  Title: Missing in Action: The Prisoners who Never Came Back; Author: Chander Suta Dogra; Publisher: HarperCollins India; Pages: 340; Price: Rs 699
  This thoroughly researched book is a moving account of the agony suffered by the families of Indian soldiers who were captured in the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan, never to be seen again. It is not just an indictment of the Pakistani state which remained, over the decades, unmoved by the humanitarian (…)

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  Leah Samples Review of Mangalik, Aroop, Dealing with Doctors, Denial and Death

  24 October 2020

  Aroop Mangalik. Dealing with Doctors, Denial and Death. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 274 pp. $22.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5381-2338-6.
  Reviewed by Leah Samples (University of Pennsylvania)
  Dr Aroop Mangalik wants you to know what it means to live well with a life-threatening illness. Here, “you” refers to the person dealing with a life-limiting disease, the parent of a child with an acute form of leukemia, or even the medical provider who wants to do more than offer treatment (…)

• Tribute to James Randi - A Cartoon | Jayaraj Vellur

  24 October 2020, by Jayaraj Vellur