Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Endangered journalists on the horizon | Mrinal Biswas

  28 August 2020

  by Mrinal Biswas*
  Country’s journalists are the most endangered species now. They are being fired right and left, facing pay cuts or being laid off at random. Not rare is the case of held up due payments to the scribes for an indefinite period. News industry owners have become most ruthless in the midst of pandemic. the mayhem of the media employees began before the onset of global phenomenon though (Read Massacre of Newspersons published by the Indian Journalists’ Association in March (…)

• Pesticide Lobby Uses Money-Power to Defame Protectors of Environment | Bharat Dogra

  28 August 2020, by Bharat Dogra

  It is an increasingly and widely accepted aspect of agriculture and farm policy that heavy chemical pesticide use of recent decades in agriculture has caused immense harm and there is wisdom in reducing pesticide use and moving towards pesticide-free farming to the extent possible in various regional contexts. Millions of people have died and suffered serious diseases due to exposure to chemical pesticides and consumption of pesticide contaminated food. There has been immense harm to (…)

• No Weddings And A Funeral | John Dayal

  28 August 2020, by John Dayal

  I lost my eldest surviving sister in law in July, to cancer. Amni Soshamma Thekkeveetil, the 83 year old widow of the late Kadavil Thomas of Thiruvalla, was the second of six sisuters and two brothers, was 83. The eldest brother and sister passed away some years ago. My wife is the second last sibling. Amni’s siblings and children are in several states in India, and several countries across the globe.
  Covid made her last days so lonely, in ICU in a Kerala hospital and at home as they (…)

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  “Kandhamal Never Again, Never Anywhere” - Appeal on 12th Anniversary of the Pogrom in Kandhamal

  28 August 2020

  Document and Appeal
  REMEMBERING KANDHAMAL
  “Kandhamal Never Again, Never Anywhere”
  The National Solidarity Forum, representing 70 national and regional organisations, has issued the following Appeal to observe the 12th Kandhamal Day anniversary on 25th August 2020. The Forum observes the pogrom against Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa masterminded by the Sangh Parivar, with the then BJD-BJP coalition government looking on. “Kandhamal Never Again, Never Anywhere” has been (…)

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  PUCL and other National Organizations Call for a Week of Protest Aug 28-Sept 5

  28 August 2020

  PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES 332, Patpar Ganj, Opposite Anand Lok Apartments, Mayur Vihar I, Delhi 110 091 Phone 2275 0014 PP FAX 4215 1459 Founder: Jayaprakash Narayan; Founding President: V M Tarkunde
  President: Ravi Kiran Jain; General Secretary: Dr. V. Suresh E.mail: puclnat[at]gmail.com ; pucl.natgensec[at]gmail.com
  27th August, 2020
  Press Release
  Organizations from All Over India Issue a call for a Protest Week,
  August 28 — September 5, Urging People to Stand Up for (…)

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  How to Help Belarus | Statement from International Crisis Group

  28 August 2020

  Moscow, Brussels and other stakeholders should avoid transforming the Belarus crisis into a European one, cooperate to warn against repression and insist on new, fair elections

• Indian foreign secretary’s hasty visit to Bangladesh misfires | M Serajul Islam

  28 August 2020

  THE Indian foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s hastily arranged and sudden visit to Dhaka is shrouded in mystery. The centrepiece of the visit was his audience with Sheikh Hasina. Not a word has come out of the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Office, not even who were present at the important audience. The Indian side has been equally silent.

• Sources of Hope in Habermas | Michael Welton

  28 August 2020

  Habermas’s social evolutionary learning theory carries critical insights pertaining to the way humans overcame specific “learning challenges” as history unfolded over thousands of years. In modern times, Habermas emphasizes that both the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union, though flawed, fan “sparks of hope” that we can learn from catastrophe. We do not simply lay down amidst the bombed-out buildings and corpse-strewn streets and perish into oblivion.

• When Haksar was Proved Right on Sri Lanka | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  28 August 2020, by M R Narayan Swamy

  Book Title: Haksar on India’s Sri Lanka Policy; Authors: V. Suryanarayan and Ashik J. Bonofer; Publishers: Centre for Asia Studies, Chennai, and Bookventure; Pages: 96; Price: Rs 200
  This is a slim but informed and, if I may say so, an accidental book. It would not have been written but for the recently published letters from the late P.N. Haksar to Thomas Abraham, a highly respected diplomat, on the Sri Lankan conflict in the 1980s. For one who was once very close to Indira Gandhi, Haksar (…)

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  Audio: V S Naipaul | BBC Radio 4 on 11 July 1980

  28 August 2020

  V S Naipaul on a radio broadcast in July 1980