2020

Let me say this straight away that India badly needs the Congress party with all its faults. A Congress-mukt Bharat is not in our interest. For Congress is the only opposition party with an all-India presence even in its present, debilitated state. Congress is very much present in the north (M.P., Rajasthan, Punjab and Chattisgarh); in the south, it wields considerable influence in Karnataka and Kerala; its presence in the west Maharashtra and Gujarat – is something to be reckoned with (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
The debate over the need for change in the Presidentship of the Congress Party has been going on for over an year following Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as Party President in July 2019. Since then he has consistently turned down pleas for his return as Party President, something which was endorsed by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra a few weeks ago. The most recent of such being Sonia Gandhi’s willingness to resign as interim President at the recent virtual CWC meeting. (…)

‘Dilli 6’ is now the sanctuary for lower middle-class Muslim socialites, who, men and women alike, claim it their birth right to speak on behalf of the Muslims and on the history of Delhi simply because they live in the walled city. Some of them can speak a little English and they dress, particularly the ladies, differently from the bulk of the ladies of old Delhi....These days interest in the history and culture of old Delhi is both academic, in a way it never was before, and fashionable. (…)

by Arindam Roy
It may be a strange coincidence or an irreversible logic of capitalist accumulation that our Prime Minister’s latest address to the nation of infusing confidence and self-sufficiency among his fellow countrymen in the wake of Covid 19, where he called for ‘Atma-nirbhar’ Bharat has a striking resemblance with the worldwide neoliberal way of managing the pandemic by ‘privatizing’ it. If one follows the trajectory of the pandemic of Covid-19 and its attendant responses globally (…)

by D. M. Diwakar∗
The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) was approved by the government of India in its cabinet on July 29, 2020, after a gap of more than three decades. This NEP2020 is a concise final report of about 65 pages out of 477 pages of the Draft New Education Policy 2019 (DNEP2019), which was prepared by an 11-member committee, headed by Dr K. Kasturirangan, a former Chairman of the ISRO, Bangalore. I have already written an article on DNEP 2019 in Mainstream earlier. (…)

by Abhijit Ghosh
There are 6.17 crore students of age group 5-18 leaving schools before completing school education as per NSSO 71 round in 2014 (Ghosh 2018). The same is about 5 crores in 2018 as per NSSO 75 round in 2018 (NEP 2020). This figure is more than the population of Australia. This can be termed as war like situation. India loses such a huge amount of young people who could contribute much better way to the development of the nation. India loses such enormous potential talent (…)

With the passing away of the former President of India, Dr Pranab Mukherjee, I have been sitting thinking of that one lone occasion when one could walk up to him and exchange greetings during that brief interaction with him at a reception that he, as President of India, had hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
This was around 2014 when I was invited for a reception where Dr Pranab Mukherjee exchanged greetings and also spoke to the guests…In fact, that was my very last entry into the (…)

If a voyager darts his glance on earth from space, the first thing visible on earth for the first time is the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China symbolizes strength, grandeur, valour of Chinese kingdoms and their prowess. On the other hand, the great wall of China also symbolizes vulnerability and weakness of China against foreign invasions. China has born assaults from Mongols, Tibetans, Turks, Huis and others in ancient and medieval times. It has always been faced with dilemmas (…)

by Meera Shankar and Ajay Shankar
After the loss of lives of Indian soldiers at Galwan, there have been calls for the boycott of Chinese goods. Counter views have been expressed that the Indian economy is so dependent on China that the costs of taking steps to stop imports would be disproportionately higher for India as most manufacturing in India is dependent on global supply chains where China has a leading role. But this is a fatalistic view. Our dependence can be reduced substantially (…)

Almost friendless, except Pakistan and North Korea, in the world, China’s brazen display of muscular power and intimidating behavior, adopting salami-slicing strategy to grab other nation’s territories, and utter disrespect to global rules has become a matter of concern to the world. Given the on-going and deteriorating tensions between the US and China, China is indulging in a diplomatic overdrive to sell its policies even though there are not many buyers. The latest narrative in this (…)