2017

by Kumudini Pati
Unique Persona
Srilatha Swaminathan was not only a comrade, with whom I worked for almost ten long years in the women’s movement led by the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA); she was a dear friend with whom I could discuss literature, art, folk music, food, cultures and even Yoga, Ayurveda and Vipassana. She came from an illustrious family of Madras, and had joined the ML movement through her interaction with the working class, for whom she was doing (…)

EDITORIAL
The marathon State Assembly elections are over. The seventh and final phase of polling in UP came to an end today—the percentage of polling being 60; whereas the second and final phase of polling in Manipur recorded an 80.6 per cent turnout.
Although these elections saw five States—Goa, Manipur, Punjab, UP and Uttarakhand—going to polls, the UP elections are the most vital since this State with 403 Assembly seats has always presented a daunting picture and the political (…)

The following is the press statement issued by the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy on March 1, 2017.
Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) expresses its solidarity with 20-year-old Gurmehar Kaur and condemns the ABVP and other forces that have targeted the brave girl. She is the daughter of a Kargil martyr while the ABVP’s parent organisation, the RSS, did not even participate in the freedom struggle.
Gurmehar Kaur is being targeted for (…)

by Om Thanvi
In response to the rape threats issued on a public forum against Gurmehar Kaur, the government and its Ministers ought to have clearly come out in support of the young student. They did exactly the opposite.
Finally, they managed to silence Gurmehar Kaur. Amidst rape threats, Kaur announced she was pulling out (https://thewire.in/112596/as-students-protest-against-abvp-gurmehar-kaur-withdraws-from-campaign-after-threats/) of the ‘Save DU Campaign’ which was initiated in (…)

by S.N. Sahu
Rabi Ray is no more. He breathed his last on March 6, 2017 at Cuttack due to age-related ailments. He was more than an admirable and outstanding figure of India’s public life. He was the only public figure of Odisha who could be called a statesman and had the dignity, grace and stature of a pan-Indian leader deriving his strength from his value-based life. With liberal outlook and vision he commanded appreciation from all quarters cutting across political and party (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
by Bidyut Mohanty
The following article is being published against the backdrop of the International Women’s Day on March 8.
Abstract
The current century saw new concerns of the people of the world, such as gross inequality cutting across caste, class, ethnicity, and gender, conspicuous consumption and production, agricultural crisis, degradation of natural resources leading to greenhouse effects and extinction of other species at large, and various forms of conflicts (…)

TRIBUTE
Baljit Malik, who passed away in Delhi on February 18, will be remembered with mixed feelings by a large number of friends. He will be remembered for his involvement with and contribution to many different kinds of worthy causes. He will be remembered also as a writer who wrote well and with sensitivity and feeling. However, he used his undoubted talents as a writer very rarely. He rightly described himself as an off-and-on writer, more off than on!
This in a way was typical of (…)

This is another article dissecting the Union Budget, written by the noted Marxist-Maoist thinker, Kobad Ghandy, and sent to Mainstream for publication from the Cherlapalli Central Jail, Cherlapalli, Medchal district, Hyderabad, where he is currently lodged. We have just received it and are publishing it immediately for the benefit of our readers. —Editor
By presenting the Budget one month in advance the government is conveniently spared the consideration of the GDP figures for the third (…)

There was politics even during the period when I was in college before partition. But it was not on communal lines as it is today. Then the enemy was the British and all were in the struggle to oust them. It was in the 1940s when Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah came to the Law College at Lahore and exhorted all of us to make a joint effort to drive out the British.
Subsequently, things came to such a pass that even water was divided into Hindu pitchers and Muslim pitchers. We, the (…)

MEDIA
by Amitava R. Sinha Roy
Watchdog journalism informs the public about corruption, nepotism, cronyism and institutional chicanery. As the fourth pillar of democracy the media, along with the judiciary, executive and the legislature, fights for the public good. Tough questions and investigative reporting must be an essential element of journalistic work and a reporter must probe and question, dig deep and demand more. To avoid shallow reporting, journalists must push for more evidence (…)