Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Recollecting the Forgotten History of State Violence | Arup Kumar Sen

  8 September, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Recent state violence on the CJP activists/supporters in New Delhi is fresh in our memory. However, the violence unleashed by the Indian State on the student activists in different universities in recent years has faded out in public memory. It is ironical that a student activist, Nehal Ahmed, published a monograph titled – Nothing Will be Forgotten: From Jamia to Shaheen Bagh (LeftWord Books, 2022), documenting incidents of State violence in and around the Jamia Millia Islamia University (…)

• Urgent Steps Needed for Protection of Chairman of Pakistan Based Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation | Prof Jagmohan Singh and Bharat Dogra

  8 September, by Bharat Dogra

  Shahid (Martyr) Bhagat Singh is one of the most inspiring freedom fighters of the liberation struggles of countries which fought against colonial rule for centuries. Over 95 years after he sacrificed his life together with other valiant freedom fighters of India like Sukhdev and Rajguru, his inspirational role extends much beyond his country India.
  So it is not at all surprising that several people dedicated to justice in the neighboring country of Pakistan are also among those who regard (…)

• Telangana’s Future Will Be Decided in Its Government Schools: An Open Letter to the Chief Minister of Telangana

  8 September, by Adama Srinivas Reddy

  Hon’ble Chief Minister,
  Since assuming office as Chief Minister, you have repeatedly emphasised the need to place education at the centre of Telangana’s development. The establishment of an Education Commission, the breakfast programme in government schools, study visits to countries such as Finland, Japan, Germany and Vietnam, your decision to provide study leave to teachers to pursue higher education abroad, and your recent initiative to seek suggestions from teachers on educational (…)

• AI Is Changing the Clock of Academia | Disha

  8 September, by Disha

  Picture two doctoral scholars sitting in the same university library. One spends three weeks meticulously sifting through journal archives, cross-referencing footnotes by hand, and slowly wrestling with dense arguments. The other feeds a handful of prompts into tools such as ChatGPT, Elicit, or Connected Papers and walks away with a structured, visual map of the entire field before lunchtime. On paper, both produce an identical literature review. In reality, the academic clock has split in (…)

• The Invisible Price Tag: Why Destroying Nature Makes GDP Look Good | Saanvi Maheshwari

  8 September

  Imagine a homeowner burning down their living room walls to keep the fireplace going through winter. For a few hours, the house is warm. Measured strictly by room temperature, the strategy succeeds. But once the fire dies, the house is uninhabitable. The owner destroyed their primary asset for a few hours of fleeting comfort.
  This is precisely how modern national accounting treats planet Earth.
  For nearly a century, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total monetary value of all finished (…)

• Need is Intergenerational Solidarity, Not Generational Exceptionalism | Rasni Bai & L T Om Prakash

  8 September

  The recent protests in Jantar Mantar and across the country, spearheaded by students, put the spotlight on Gen Z and their distinctive style of activism. The protest has changed the public’s perception of youth from passive digital natives to active participants in democracy. Although critics raise concerns about ad hoc activism, emotional rhetoric, and the protesters’ viral symbolism, a widespread narrative holds that Gen Z is fundamentally different from earlier generations, and the (…)

• The Toto Paradox of West Bengal: Moving People, Stalling Aspirations | Abhijit Ghosh

  8 September

  Across West Bengal, today, mobility has a new sound—the soft, electric hum of the e-rickshaws, popularly known as “toto”. The toto has become one of the most visible signs of technological change in everyday transport. Carrying passengers from villages to markets, railway stations and schools, it has expanded mobility at relatively low cost. Yet behind this transformation lies a less visible question: does the rise of the toto represent economic progress, or does it reflect an economy (…)

• To Iran’s political prisoners, trapped ‘between two blades of a scissors’ —Open letter

  8 September

  On one side, you face the domination of the Islamic Republic; on the other, the imperialist forces that republic claims to stand against
  20 Aug 2026
  August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the 19 August anniversary of the UK- and US-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults (…)

• Form-of-Life | Giorgio Agamben

  8 September

  The ancient Greeks did not have only one term to express what we mean by the word life. They used two semantically and morphologically distinct terms: zoé, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, humans, or gods), and bios, which signified the form or manner of living peculiar to a single individual or group. In modern languages this opposition has gradually disappeared from the lexicon (and where it is retained, as in biology and zoology, it no longer (…)

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  Letter to Chief Minister of UP regarding illegal house arrest of leaders and workers of the Communist Party of India (Aug 31, 2026)

  8 September

  Communist Party of India
  We hereby release the text of the letter written by Communist Party of India General Secretary D. Raja to Shri Amit Shah, Hon’ble Home Minister, regarding illegal house arrest of leaders and workers of the Communist Party of India in Uttar Pradesh. Sd/-
  Roykutty
  Office Secretary
  ******
  New Delhi,
  August 31, 2026
  To,
  Shri Amit Shah,
  Hon’ble Minister for Home Affairs,
  Government of India,
  New Delhi.
  Sub: Illegal House arrest of leaders and (…)