Mainstream Weekly

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  Table of Contents Mainstream - Lockdown Edition no9 | May 23, 2020

  23 May 2020

  MAINSTREAM, VOL LVIII NO 23, NEW DELHI, MAY 23, 2020 - Contents: 1. Letter to Readers - Mainstream 23 May 2020 - Lockdown Edition no9 2. Um-Phoon Exposed Man’s Helplessness Before Nature’s Fury | Barun Das Gupta 3. Exodus as resistance | Ajaz Ashraf 4. It’s a Hobson’s choice for labour | C.Raghu 5. Economy Rhyme Cartoon | Ajith 6. Bond | AK Das 7. Mazdoors face tragedy / Conversions to Hinduism / Eid in Nizamuddin | Humra Quraishi 8. Criticism Cannot be Sedition | TJS George 9. Lockdown (…)

• Letter to Readers Mainstream, 23 May 2020 - Lockdown Edition no9

  23 May 2020

  Super-cyclone Amphan of 21 May 2020 has caused serious damage to land and life in Eastern India and Bangladesh. Why the massive devastation in Bengal and Bangladesh after the cyclone has found practically no coverage on national television is quite disturbing. The disaster to the ecologically sensitive zone of the Sundarbans is an international calamity and the state of West Bengal has rightly demanded that given the scale of damage (estimated to be over 10 billion dollars) it should be (…)

• Um-Phoon Exposed Man’s Helplessness Before Nature’s Fury

  23 May 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  Super-cyclone Um-Phoon that hit southern Bengal on May 20 at a velocity of 160 kilometres per hour left a trail of death and devastation behind. It is south Bengal – East and West Medinipur and South and North 24-Parganas — which had to bear the brunt of Nature’s fury at its worst. West Bengal has not witnessed devastation at such a wide scale in recent memory.
  Standing crops were destroyed, houses, especially mud houses, were razed to the ground. The death toll, however, remained (…)

• Exodus as resistance | Ajaz Ashraf

  23 May 2020

  May 18, 2020
  by Ajaz Ashraf | Mumbai
  Bob Marley’s imagining of leaving a corrupted Babylon for the fatherland in his song Exodus, is today the reality of lakhs of migrant workers rejecting the Indian state and returning home
  Migrants walking home to Madhya Pradesh seen on the highway. Pic/sameer markande It is possible you recalled the lyrics of Exodus, the song that reggae singer Bob Marley belted with such élan, as you watched lakhs of migrant workers trudge from cities to villages, (…)

• It’s a Hobson’s Choice for Labour

  23 May 2020

  by Chittarvu Raghu Suspension of crucial labour laws for varying lengths of time by some of the states viz. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya (…)

• Economy Rhyme - Cartoon by Ajith

  23 May 2020

• Bond

  23 May 2020

  On a national highway migrants
  overcrowding a truck were speeding.
  Destinations: their homes
  hundreds of miles away
  from the jobless, moneyless,
  shelterless Covid lockdown.
  There were two young friends
  in the standing space
  at the back of the open truck.
  Suddenly one of them fell sick,
  giving out a suspicious symptom.
  That alerted the other migrants
  who forced him to get down.
  The other friend refusing
  to leave him alone jumped
  off the truck to stay with him.
  He held the (…)

• Mazdoors face tragedy / Conversions to Hinduism / Eid in Nizamuddin

  23 May 2020, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  May 20, 2020
  Those shots of our mazdoors and migrant workers going through the worst possible tragedies, hit. Continue to hit. Something or everything snaps within, makes one wonder what’s become of us, what are we getting reduced to, if the crying mazdoors pleading for food and water, get the cops’ lathis!
  Mind you, all these inhuman tactics heaped on our mazdoors in their own country, by their own sarkar —that is, the sarkar of the day! There couldn’t a bigger tragedy. (…)

• Criticism Cannot Be Sedition

  23 May 2020, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Two things worry me. Deeply. Feeling patriotic, I sat glued to the television set for the Prime Minister’s "address to the nation." After two minutes I felt hungry and moved to the dining table. Like me the majority of people in the south must have lost interest in the Hindi prabhashan. I don’t feel good about my lack of interest in Hindi. But I don’t feel guilty either.
  The second thing that sent me off to the dining table was the nothing-new feeling created by (…)

• Lockdown locks the rural economy: Some Preliminary signals from a surveyed village

  23 May 2020

  by Dr. Atanu Sengupta and Dr. Asish Kumar Pal
  Abstract:
  India is rural based economy. Several workers of several sectors live in rural India. These different workers are basically in unorganized sectors. They are neglected and backward in the society. During the lockdown period announced by both central as well as state government to combat the spread of COVOD- 19 throughout the country, such type of workers are jobless. They are hopeless not to earn any income by which they can (…)