Mainstream Weekly

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  Table of Contents - Mainstream COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.6 | May 2, 2020

  3 May 2020

  Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 20, New Delhi, May 2, 2020
  Contents:
  LETTER TO THE READERS - COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.6
  The History of May Day | Eric Hobsbawm
  USA: How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Using the Coronavirus | William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman
  Nehru and Nature | Sukumaran C.V.
  Will There Be Reunification of Communist Movement in India? | Tikaram Sharma
  The Botched Policy Response to Fighting Corona | Partha Sen
  Need for immediate nationalisation of health (…)

• LETTER TO THE READERS - COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.6

  3 May 2020

  Yesterday the Centre extended the nationwide lockdown for the second time for two weeks starting May 4. However, considerable relaxations have been announced in the green and orange zones; these include movement of private and public transport within a state as well as further opening up of the economy.
  The three district-wise zones are defined as green (that is those districts — 319 in all — with either no confirmed cases of COVID-19 till date or not confirmed in the last 21 (…)

• The History of May Day | Eric Hobsbawm

  3 May 2020

  by Eric Hobsbawm
  The late historian Eric Hobsbawm recounts the history of International Workers’ Day.
  In 1990 Michael Ignatieff, writing about Easter in the Observer, remarked that “secular societies have never succeeded in providing alternatives to religious rituals.” He pointed out that the French Revolution “may have turned subjects into citizens, may have put liberté, égalité and fraternité on the lintel of every school and put the monasteries to the sack, but apart from the (…)

• USA: How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Using the Coronavirus

  3 May 2020

  by William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman
  There’s a battle brewing for the future of national security spending.
  On one side, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we should think about national security. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, recently argued in The Atlantic that we have to rethink the orientation and priorities of our government, and “it makes no sense that the Pentagon budget is (…)

• Nehru and Nature

  3 May 2020, by Sukumaran C.V.

  by Sukumaran C.V.
  We cannot go back to that old pantheistic outlook and yet perhaps we may still sense the mystery of nature, listen to its song of life and beauty, and draw vitality from it. That song is not sung in the chosen spots only, and we can hear it, if we have the ears for it, almost everywhere.—Jawaharlal Nehru (The Discovery of India)
  There are plenty of writings on Nehru the secularist and Nehru the democrat. But virtually nothing has been written on Nehru the (…)

• Will There Be Reunification of Communist Movement in India?

  3 May 2020

  by Tikaram Sharma
  After the massive victory of Right Reaction and blow to the left and democratic forces, particularly to Communists in the 2019 elections, well wishers and good numbers of Communist cadres and sympathizers are realizing the need of reunification of Communist Movement. They believe that only Communists can defeat the Right Reactionary forces. The CPI has always been in its favor of reunification and conveyed its decision to the CPI (M) and other Communist groups to respond. (…)

• The Botched Policy Response to Fighting Corona

  3 May 2020

  by Partha Sen
  The prospect of the Prime Minister addressing the nation at 8 PM (no matter on which date) sends a shiver down my spine. One cannot but recall the demonetization experience of November 2016. In spite of that unpleasant experience, we expected a well thought-out policy response to the corona pandemic that was knocking at India’s door. Hamstrung by decades of neglect of its public health system by the various ruling parties, the outcome was going to be grim. Nevertheless, one (…)

• Need for immediate nationalisation of health services

  3 May 2020

  by Bobby Ramakant, Surabhi Agarwal and Sandeep Pandey
  Ram Shankar met with a fatal hit-and-run accident in rural area of Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh on 16 April, 2020 and was referred by the District Hospital to Trauma Centre of King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow. He could not be admitted there and was referred to nearby Balrampur Hospital. From there he was referred to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia hospital. He was denied admission at these government facilities as only (…)

• Migrant Workers in “The Present Time of Chaos”

  3 May 2020, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Ranabir Samaddar delivered the Biblab Chakraborty Memorial Lecture (2018) titled The Present Time of Chaos. One of his seminal observations in the lecture was that “a historical sense is important in a situation of chaos, as the conditions of chaos do not exist in some ethereal space outside of history”.
  Very recently, Calcutta Research Group (CRG), under the editorship of Ranabir Samaddar, has brought out a collection of essays around the lives and politics of migrant workers in India, (…)

• The Political Economy of Formal-informal Dichotomy and Post-coronavirus World

  3 May 2020

  by Indranil De
  The policy and planning in post-colonial countries have always been biased towards the urban elites (Chaplin, 2011). It is very much evident from the division of urban areas between well-served and unserved areas . The well served areas emerged as formal areas of residence and unserved areas as informal areas or slums. The Indian policymakers have always maintained a hierarchy between formal and informal sectors, with informal as subordinate to the formal. This is not only (…)