2020

by Bhartendu Kumar Singh
While the Galwan imbroglio continues and we ponder towards the next improbable, China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA), the villain-in-chief, may be celebrating on the other side! The one-time guerrilla army is a formidable force propelling China’s rise as a great power. It’s aggressive posturing on conflict issues with many neighbours is indeed key theme in international relations. The loss of twenty soldiers in Galwan could also be attributed, amongst others, to (…)

by Tenzin Tsundue and Sandeep Pandey
India has a cancerous wound around its Himalayan neck and this has been literally a pain in the neck ever since India’s humiliating defeat during the Chinese invasion of India in 1962. The recent Galwan Valley massacre only added salt to the wound. It has come to this because when China invaded the neighbouring country Tibet in 1950, India was in high romance with the newly established communist regime under Mao Zedong after a bloody revolution. (…)

One of the most worrying aspects of the international situation is the growing conflict between India and China. All possible efforts should be made by these two important countries as well as the international community to resolve this conflict at the earliest and in any case to prevent this from escalating into a full-blown war. In this context five important questions need to be considered each of which has a wider implication as well.
Firstly we need to ask what exactly has the UNO (…)

by Prof. Dusmanta Kumar Giri
Indian citizens have, of late, been experiencing a good many governance crises despite having a writhen constitution. There seems to be three problems in upholding our constitutional democracy. One, the constitutional provisions appear to be prone to more than one interpretation. That is how we find the legal and expert opinion divided on each issue. The ruling party, in such case, takes the opinion that is convenient to its party political interest. Second, we (…)

A man injected plague germ to kill his stepbrother
The crime was extraordinary, perhaps, India had no parallel. The elder eliminated his younger stepbrother by injecting plague germs. In a remorseless design, a hired medical professional, as an accomplice, accomplished the job. The scene of the crime selected, of all places, was the busiest Howrah Railway station, on the outskirt of Calcutta. As planned, the crime was committed smoothly. The conspirator perhaps believed to evade detection (…)

by Dr. Asish Kumar Pal and Dr. Atanu Sengupta
Abstract:
The COVID-19 outbreak in India since late January 2020 has rapidly grown by leaps and bounds and aroused enormous attention globally. The government was forced to announce a lockdown situation across the country. In this period, the public at large have experienced boredom, loneliness, disappointment, irritability and anxiety due to their prolonged stay at home. All groups of people, both male and female, are affected by a deep (…)

by Garima Mani Tripathi
Philosophers have often spoken about the concept of ‘self’ through detachments from ‘external material life’ and through process of inner self-purification. However, ‘self’ stands diluted in contemporary period, subsumed under the rubric of mechanical and material life. Modernist icons of commodity capitalism like malls, food joints, cinemas etc, have become inseperable aspects of our material life and taken over our folk culture, neighbourhood and even our extended (…)

by André Gorz
[This 1973 essay first appeared in Le Sauvage en septembre-octobre 1973 ’’L’idéologie sociale de la bagnole’ about how the automobile have taken over our cities ]
The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when (…)

To understand the world today, it is indispensable to study the inequality regimes, and especially the way European proprietarian and colonial powers affected the development of non-European trifunctional societies. The traces of that lengthy history remain quite visible in the structure of contemporary inequality.—Thomas Piketty.
Karl Marx talked about the unequal economic infrastructure that bolsters the political superstructure which, in return, helps the continuation of the economic (…)

Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 37, New Delhi, August 29, 2020 Letter to the Readers - Mainstream, August 29, 2020 | The Editor Prashant Bhushan vs. Supreme Court - Contempt of Court or Truth and Democracy? | Sukla Sen I believe the Prime Minister | Salman Anees Soz New Education Policy 2020 Special Focus Issue * NEP: Fancy Ideals or Real Concerns? | Avijit Pathak * NEP 2020: Roadmap for Exclusivist Idea of India? | Biswajit Bhoi * The New Education Policy: A (…)