Table of Contents, Mainstream, Oct 8, 2026

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In this issue:

• Subversion of Credibility of the Election Commission of India | Arup Kumar Sen
• Jantar Mantar !! | Radhakanta Barik
• The CJP Phenomenon | Sukla Sen
• SIR Vote Chori: After three decades of voting, I went off the voter rolls! | M.R. Narayan Swamy
• Rising Partisanship Eroding Institutional Independence and Systemic Challenges | Arun Kumar
• Why India needs education on reproductive health | Mohini Yadav
• The New Poem | Sagari Chhabra
• Corporatisation of Healthcare Undermines Public Health | Arun Mitra
• The Contradiction at the Heart of Budget 2026’s Disability Agenda | Sanya Roy
• Sumit Sarkar and the Craft of Historical Inquiry | Aftab Mohammad
• After the Second Congress | A. Losovsky (1923)

BOOKS

• Bata: A multinational that stole Indian hearts | M.R. Narayan Swamy

IMAGE & SOUND

• Video: How Capitalism Really Works ? | Anwar Sheikh
• Music: The Green Onions (1967) - Booker T. and MG’s

Editor’s Picks:

• The historic wave of labour unrest that swept India
• CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s Partisan Functioning Fructifies Constituent Assembly’s Apprehensions Concerning Erosion of ECI’s Independence
• ‘No land for burial’: Chhattisgarh village resolution raises concerns for Christians
• When Eric Hobsbawm Encountered the Communists of India
• Mother Father
• Battleground Brazil
• Brazil is a right-wing country now
• Let a Hundred Websites Bloom
• What France’s student protesters want – and what the government is offering

Books of Note:

• The Last Purge: Soviet Uzbekistan During the Cotton Affair, 1975–1991 by Riccardo Mario Cucciolla (Cornell University Press, 2026, 258 Pages | ISBN13: 9781501788970)
• Judging the Past: Ethics, History and Memory by Geoffrey Scarre (Palgrave Macmillan Cham, softcover, ISBN 978-3-031-34513-5 | DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34511-1)
• Mélanie Lamotte, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire. Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2026. pp. xix+369.

* Cover page artwork: Design for a dresser — Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1906)