2020

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11th March 2020. There is an urgent need for policies that will effectively encourage and regulate research, production and access to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19 to ensure that they are accessible to all without any discrimination.

DOCUMENT
The Hon’ble Chief Minister Maharashtra
25 June 2020
Subject: Urgent action needed towards inhuman conditions in Maharashtra jails
Dear Sir
As we mark the 45th anniversary of the day when emergency was imposed in the country and thousands of political dissenters were locked up in the prisons, we wish to bring to your notice the deplorable and abysmal condition of jails and quarantine facilities in Maharashtra. The conditions were recently flagged by Gautam Navlakha, a (…)

by Aashish K Shukla
’We’ are the framers of the world’s largest constitution and the pillars of the largest democracy. We have equally contributed in nation-building. We altogether have brought India to that level in the last seventy-three years, that even today in this crisis, we are saying with great confidence that ‘the world is looking towards India’. But we, who made this India are on the streets for the last several months and unfortunately no one is there to see us. ‘We, the (…)

If there is one lesson that the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us, it is as to how governments in the developed and developing world have been caught napping and unprepared to meet a disaster of this nature and scale. Even after the global community overcomes the pandemic questions will linger on as to why governments including the Indian Government failed to act in time such as closing its international borders even though first reports of the corona virus appeared in January 2020.

8th of March 1979 women’s mass protest in Tehran to oppose a religious ruling

After the abrogation of Art 370 and reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir state into two union territories, political leaders from both regions of Jammu and Kashmir adhering to different ideological positions were arrested or put under house arrest .Some prominent civil society actors too were booked. The vernacular media saw virtual «crackdown» and it still reels under it.

by Rajinder Chaudhary
On the face of it, no one can take exception to the goal of “Giving freedom to the agriculturalists to sell their produce to the buyers and at the place & time of their choice, to whom so ever and wherever they get better prices” as an official document of the Government of India puts it. Echoing this, while announcing the promulgation of three ordinances to further free up the trade in agricultural produce, the Union agriculture minister is reported to have (…)

It is already acknowledged that massive losses in various spheres of our socio-economic system have been recorded due to Covid related lockdown. The workers of transport sector are in the informal in Indian economy. Many of these workers are now jobless. These workers are basically marginalised income earners. Most of them are from socio-economically backward families. So they are in a whirlpool of economic hardships fostered by their joblessness. This paper attempts to cover the misery conditions that ensure the cost of living status of these workers throughout the lockdown period. The study also suggests unravelling the impact of the government intervention in their life and livelihood. This is study is based on a result of rapid survey of a group of transport workers.

An octogenarian, clad in his coolie’s uniform, working at the railway station, carries luggage of the poor migrants over his aging shoulder free of cost. An elderly woman, not charging extra money, prepares food packets with shaky hands, sitting, bending in her small kitchen for the distressed migrants. A school going girl, feeling an urge from within to return what society has given her, pays from her piggy bank the home-bound airfare of a few stranded migrants. These are no (…)

Table of Contents - Mainstream Weekly, 20 June 2020 1. Letter to the Readers 20 June 2020 | The Editor 2. Galwan: Culmination of Years of Wrong China Policy | Barun Das Gupta 3. Any Confrontation Between India And China Will Be A Huge Blow To Humanity | Bharat Dogra 4. Modi-bin-Tughluq - Narendra Damodardas’s second term as the Sultan | Sumanta Banerjee 5. Two Democracy’s | Badri Raina 6. DOCUMENT: CPI Press Release of 17 June 2020 on India China Clash 7. Corona exposes the dilemma (…)