Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Photo of Shapurji Saklatwala who was elected as a Communist MP in the British Parliament in 1927

  24 July 2020
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  Audio: Story of Soviet dissidents who stood up against Red Armys invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

  24 July 2020

  On August 25th, 1968, just four days after Russian tanks rolled through Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring reform movement, eight brave Russians staged a daring protest on Moscow’s Red Square, unfurling banners that read “Hands off Czechoslovakia!” and “Shame to the Invaders!”. They were quickly surrounded by communist police, beaten up and arrested. Most of them spent years locked up in prison, labour camps or in psychiatric institutions.

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  Ek Aur Anek Ekta - A 1974 animation film by Vijaya Mulay | Films Division, 1974

  24 July 2020

  An animation film weaving a story around the proverb "United we stand, Divided we fall".

• John Lewis, the Good Trouble Man | Badri Raina

  24 July 2020, by Badri Raina

  John Lewis, you looked trouble
  In the eye, and from its womb
  Forged good trouble.
  From the march on Washington
  Till sixty years after, through umpteen
  Arrests and near-fatal beatings
  Your laughing spirit infused justice
  With life and substance.
  Never saying never, you shamed
  Our pusillanimous dithering
  And lack of faith, inspiring
  Generations of every hue
  To let a cussed world of infamy
  Know how to become fully human
  By carrying your conviction to
  Disarm the (…)

• MASK! | AK Das

  24 July 2020

  Boisterous, measured, hilarious, abrupt, laughter alters in its flight over a face bright, innocent, wrinkled, furrowed, vivid in all its colours, shades, contours. Now a mask has crept in, covering from ear to ear nose, lips underneath, reducing laughter to a smile reflected by a pair of moving, floating eyeballs. The mask conceals expressions from a face, making it slippery to read if the smile is fake or showing the real intent; it drains the possible emotional reaction. Human face (…)

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  Table of Contents Mainstream - Lockdown Edition no.17 | July 18, 2020

  17 July 2020

  Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 31, New Delhi, July 18, 2020 LETTER TO THE READERS - Mainstream’s, COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.17 NREGA: The “digging hole” of Modi must take care of poor | Arun Srivastava A case for truth: Media oppression is a shifting landscape | Sevanti Ninan DOCUMENT: Report of the Delhi Minorities Commission Fact-finding Committee on the North-East Delhi Riots of February 2020 DOCUMENT: Violence Against Christians Spreads to 50% of Indian States - 95 (…)

• LETTER TO THE READERS - Mainstream’s, COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.17 | July 18, 2020

  17 July 2020

  The initial trajectory of the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic was China, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, the United State and Iran —all rich or middle-income countries— where it rapidly spread and caused dramatic harm but many months on, it has now engulfed the poorer countries of the globe. These countries of the Global South have more vulnerable health and social infrastructure facing a severe impact. Brazil, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico and Peru are all experiencing very large rise in (…)

• NREGA: The “digging hole” of Modi must take care of poor | Arun Srivastava

  17 July 2020

  by Arun Srivastava
  The much despised and derided NREGA scheme has at least helped the Modi government to salvage its prestige and image. If the UPA government had not executed this pro-poor, feed the poor programme it would have been tough to comprehend the nature and quantum of ignominy that the Modi government had to suffer.
  Basically this programme was meant for the unskilled daily wage earner labourers, but the Central government used it to overcome the crisis created by the return (…)

• A case for truth: Media oppression is a shifting landscape | Sevanti Ninan

  17 July 2020

  Arms of the government see journalism (of all kinds) not as a useful source of feedback at a time when the population is in distress but as a nuisance to be squashed. Fake news is no longer seen only as an electronic menace but as reporting with malign intent, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere.

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  Report of the Delhi Minorities Commission Fact-finding Committee on the North-East Delhi Riots of February 2020

  17 July 2020

  Excerpt from the preface: ". . . The report is fairly comprehensive and even-handed but due to the non-cooperation of Delhi Police, the fact-finding committee could not present a more comprehensive and incisive report. The committee has also studied the issue of compensation given to the victims by the Government of Delhi so far. It has come up with a number of recommendations to be implemented by the Central and state governments and by the Delhi Minorities Commission. The most important (…)