2026

In Daniel Evan Weiss’s satirical novel, ‘The Roaches Have No King,’ a colony of besieged and hungry cockroaches, ignored by the humans who cohabitate their apartment, launches an elaborate campaign to reclaim the space that power had sealed off from them. The premise is absurdist fiction, but the instinct it describes is not. Perhaps the Chief Justice of India thought that the calling of the unemployed youth of the country ‘cockroaches’ by him in the open court on May 15 this year would be (…)

[( Abstract Kerala verdict 2026 undoubtedly shows that no party can afford to take people’s will for granted. The verdict is a clear reply to the perceived arrogance of the CPI(M) leaders and the intolerant behavior of the Chief Minister. The LDF in general and CPI(M) in particular failed to respect the sentiments of ordinary people. The common man’s agenda was simple one, to teach the ruling LDF a lesson. During the two term LDF rule they could render reasonably fair governance in the (…)

Very recently, Indira Jaising, the eminent legal practitioner in the Supreme Court, has expressed her thoughts in her conversations with Ritu Menon, the noted feminist writer and publisher. The conversations have been incorporated in the book titled – The Constitution is My Home: Conversations on a Life in Law (Harper Collins Publishers, India, 2026).
In the Author’s Note, Indira Jaising stated: “Over the past six decades of my legal career, not a single day has passed without my entering (…)

During every election season, media attention fixates on candidates, campaign strategies, shifting vote banks, and volatile results. Far less attention is paid to the enduring architecture of corrupt power that survives regardless of electoral victories or defeats. This entrenched nexus—comprising politicians, capitalists, bureaucrats, criminals, and influential rural strongmen—operates through the calculated distribution of favors, contracts, and patronage to protect shared economic and (…)

Abstract:
The article exposes how India’s biggest sanitation drive, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), fails to address the safe management of sewage and faecal sludge. It leads to the persistence of hazardous working conditions for workers while cleaning the sewer and septic tanks. Additionally, it pollutes the environment due to lack of proper treatment facility. Further, the article explores deeper flaws in the existing Open Defecation Free (ODF) classification framework under the Swachh (…)

The recurring controversies surrounding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) are no longer merely about examination malpractice. Repeated allegations of paper leaks, impersonation rackets, irregularities and abrupt cancellations point to a deeper structural crisis in India’s education system. Unless this crisis is understood beyond the narrow framework of policing and surveillance, such scandals will continue to recur.
After every leak, the official response follows a (…)

Letter to the Editor, Mainstream
As an aged academic researcher, I like to ventilate via your magazine/journal my one earnest appeal to the entire Indian social science profession and fraternity. In my fairly long career as a researcher in social sciences, I have observed one particular ‘trait’ among the majority of Indian researchers who publish their field-survey-based empirical results without ever mentioning anything whatsoever about the date or period when the survey was conducted. (…)

The Indian Constitution reserves seats in legislatures for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It does not reserve seats in Cabinet, in the higher judiciary, in the Indian Administrative Service, in university vice-chancellorships, in newspaper editorial boards, in corporate boardrooms, or in the commanding heights of civil society. These are the spaces where consequential decisions are made — where budgets are written, where laws are interpreted, where knowledge is certified, where (…)

Abstract
The ever-increasing environmental awareness and critical self-reliance thinking under the combined pressures of geopolitical conflict and rising energy insecurity necessitate the transition of India’s automobile industry to the public fleet. This paper examines how war-induced oil price volatility and constrained inputs have exposed systemic flaws in ICE (internal combustion engine)-powered transport systems. It highlights the growing momentum of electric vehicles (EVs) as a (…)

[(Abstract: The reluctance surrounding the Agriculture portfolio in Kerala’s new government is not a routine episode of coalition politics. It is a revealing political symbol of a deeper transformation in Kerala’s society and development model. Agriculture, once central to land relations, social reform, rural livelihoods and political mobilisation, has increasingly lost prestige in the public imagination. The crisis is no longer only about prices, productivity or farm income; it is also (…)