Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Politics as War on the People | Arup Kumar Sen

  24 July 2020, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The politics of State Power in India has taken the distinct form of declaring war on the people. The recent developments in our country bear testimony to it.
  On March 13, 2020, Yogi Adityanath-led UP government gave its approval to Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damage to Public and Private Property (UPRDPPP) Ordinance, 2020. The government’s decision came a day after the Supreme Court did not stay the Allahabad High Court order to the Lucknow administration to “forthwith” remove roadside “name (…)

• Punjab’s Yearning For A Different Path of Development | Bharat Dogra and Jagmohan Singh

  24 July 2020, by Bharat Dogra, Jagmohan Singh

  In recent years there has been a very welcome and encouraging trend of looking beyond conventional indicators like GDP per capita and evaluating progress more on basis of genuine short-term and long-term welfare. In this wider and much better evaluation questions relating to non-fulfillment of basic needs of a significant section of people, damage done to health and environment and difficulties in spread of human values conducive to justice , equality, simplicity, sharing, peace and welfare (…)

• India’s Trade-relationship with China: The New Imperialism | B P Mathur

  24 July 2020, by B P Mathur

  Chinese import have thrown a spanner in the wheel of India’s economic progress per se and industrial manufacturing in particular. The Chinese import is so hard hitting on Indian industry that many manufacturers have become traders.
  The impact of Chinese goods has been such that India is threatened to become a country of importers and traders with domestic factories either cutting down production or shutting down completely...The country can ill afford its industry including MSMEs to get (…)

• Glorifying Murders and Murderers | Barun Das Gupta

  24 July 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  A leopard, it is said, cannot change its spots. If it does, it ceases to be a leopard. This old proverb came back to the present writer’s mind when he came across a news item published in The Indian Express of July 14 with the headline: “Kerala CPM leaders give hero’s farewell to party leader convicted of murder.” What was it all about?
  The CPI-M proudly calls itself a Stalinist party. And Stalinists show no mercy toward anyone who is, or is perceived to be, holding any view contrary to (…)

• Degrowth and the emerging mosaic of alternatives | Corinna Burkhart, Nina Treu, Matthias Schmelzer

  24 July 2020

  In the face of unfettered globalization, the rise of right-wing movements around the globe and the dangers of climate catastrophe, it seems easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism, growth and domination.

• Memo to the left: Winning votes is not ‘selling out’ | Loris Caruso

  24 July 2020

  The left must try to become truly ‘popular’ again, trying to translate values and programs into the language of common sense and bringing together two elements (one’s own political proposal and ‘the spontaneous feelings of the masses,’ as Gramsci called them).

• Khrushchev’s Speech at the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU: How a secret document got into American newspapers | Artyom Dobrovolsky

  24 July 2020

  [English translation of an article that appeared in a Russian news site]
  Three years passed after the death of the Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Joseph Stalin. With his death, the Cold War between the USSR and the USA not only did not end, but also began to gain momentum. As a result of a complex bureaucratic struggle, Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the USSR. He became one of the initiators of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, which was called upon to (…)

• Theja Gunawardana – a leading pioneer in Sri Lanka’s left movement | Kalyananda Tiranagama

  24 July 2020

  by Kalyananda Tiranagama
  The 25th anniversary of the death of Mrs. Theja Gunawardana, a great personality and an indefatigable fighter for social justice who played an indelible role in the Left Movement in Sri Lanka falls on July 17, 2020. Most of the people belonging to the present generations may not be aware of the role Theja has played and the contributions she has made in the early stages of the Left Movement in our country and for the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggle (…)

• Are extremists exploiting the pandemic? | Saleem Samad

  24 July 2020

  by Saleem Samad
  Conspiracy theories and disinformation are spreading at an alarming rate
  When Sara Khan, lead commissioner for an independent Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) in a flagship report “Challenging Hateful Extremism” talked of how effective existing British laws are in dealing with hateful extremist activity — policy-makers and government officials in Britain were dumbfounded.
  The report, launched on June 10, observes that the far right to the far left and Islamist (…)

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  Conlon on Kidambi and Kamat and Dwyer, ’Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos’

  24 July 2020

  Prashant Kidambi, Manjiri Kamat, Rachel Dwyer, eds. Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 336 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-006170-8.
  Reviewed by Frank F. Conlon (University of Washington) Published on H-Asia (July, 2020) Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin)
  In January 2017, an international conference organized by the University of Mumbai’s History Department with support of the University of (…)