Mainstream Weekly

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• These Small Farmers Have Big Hopes from Natural Farming | Bharat Dogra

  9 September 2023, by Bharat Dogra

  A quiet but significant change has come over the remote village of Bahera (in Niwari district of Madhya Pradesh) in recent times. More and more villagers are involved in intense discussions on natural farming. In fact even farmers from neighboring villages have been coming over to look at the demonstration plots of natural farming and at the multi-layer vegetable gardens and fruit trees grown using natural farming methods. The verdict on these discussions is most often favorable for natural (…)

• A Tribute to Akshay Dutta – the pioneer Bengali rationalist | Jayanta Kumar Ghosal

  9 September 2023

  by Jayanta Kumar Ghosal
  Romesh Chandra Dutta, the doyen of 19th Century Bengali Literature, wrote, “Akshay Kumar Dutta and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar were the true successors of Raja Rammohan Rai. They inherited his strong enthusiasm for social reform and devoted their lives to the good of their country. And they also perfected the literary prose style of Bengal which was first rudely shaped by Raja Rammohan Rai.”
  Akshay Kumar and Iswar Chandra both were born in 1820, the first was senior (…)

• The Utopia | Eduardo Galeano

  9 September 2023

  What about we rave for a while What about we fix our eyes beyond the infamy to surmise another possible world The air is clean from all venom that doen’t come from the human fears and from the human passions On the streets the automobiles will be crushed by the dogs People won’t be driven by the automobile nor will they be programmed by the computer nor will they be bought by the supermarket nor will they be watched by the TV either The TV will stop being the most important member of (…)

• Passion and defiance: The outstanding story of women’s cricket in Pakistan | Noor e Emaan

  9 September 2023

  September 1, 2023
  Indian sports journalist Aayush Puthran’s book Unveiling Jazbaa spotlights the daunting challenges faced by women cricketers in Pakistan, making their victories on the world stage all the more remarkable
  By Noor e Emaan
  In the summer of 2017, my sister and I joined the Kinnaird Cricket Club at the main grounds of Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore, Pakistan. I remember the cool shade of the trees in contrast with the sudden harsh heat of the open ground as we walked (…)

• Einstein got it – philosophy and science do go hand in hand | Kenan Malik

  9 September 2023

  24 Feb 2019
  Shame on those scientists who are unwilling to embrace the importance of philosophers
  Last week it was revealed that Edinburgh University’s David Purdie had discovered a letter from Albert Einstein in which the great scientist notes the importance of 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume in developing his theory of special relativity.
  Without having reading Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Einstein wrote: “I cannot say that the solution would have come.” (…)

• How folk remedies can fuel misinformation | Katrine K. Donois & Hassan Vally

  9 September 2023

  August 30, 2023
  When London faced the bubonic plague in 1665, many people desperately sought a way to protect themselves and their loved ones from getting sick. One widely adopted method consisted of mixing two small cloves of garlic in a pint of fresh milk. People believed that drinking this cocktail in the morning, on an empty stomach, would prevent the feared disease.
  Like those living through the great plague of London
  Unfortunately, despite laboratory studies showing that garlic (…)

• Guns for Hire? A Season for Mercenaries | Thalif Deen

  9 September 2023

  UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 2023 (IPS) - Just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government in the Maldives back in 1988, I asked a Maldivian diplomat, using a familiar military catch phrase, about the strength of his country’s “standing army.”
  “Standing army?”, the diplomat asked with mock surprise, and remarked perhaps half-jokingly, “We don’t even have a sitting army.”
  With a population of about 250,000, around that time, the Maldives was perhaps one of the few countries with no (…)

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  Jabalpur Declaration from the 18th national conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association

  9 September 2023

  (Text adopted in the eighteenth national conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association (Jabalpur, 20, 21 and 22 August, 2023)
  Forty-three years ago in this city of Jabalpur, participating in the national conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association, we the writers of all the Indian languages, as guardians of the glorious tradition and legacy of the progressive writing movement, had committed ourselves to protect the ideals of democracy, secularism and socialism. Today, when we (…)

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  EGI Statement on FIRs registered by the Manipur Police against the Guild

  9 September 2023

  The Editors Guild of India is disturbed by the registration of First Information Reports (FIRs) by the Manipur Police against the President of the Guild as well as the members of the fact-finding team that had visited Manipur to study and document media’s coverage of ethnic clashes in the state. The Guild is further shocked by the intimidatory statements made by the Chief Minister of Manipur, Mr. N Biren Singh, in response to the report.

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  Editors’s Guild of India Report on Media’s Reportage of the Ethnic Violence in Manipur

  9 September 2023