2026

Loktantrik Rashtranirman Abhiyan
Smt. Draupadi Murmu H. E. the President of India New Delhi
Sub: Request to return the MMDR bill 2026 to parliament for reconsideration.
Esteemed Madam,
Loktantrik Rashtranirman Abhiyan requests Your Excellency to return to the Parliament for reconsideration the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026, which is now awaiting your assent.
It is extremely harmful to the federal structure of our polity as envisioned in the (…)

BOOK REVIEW From Life Itself Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan
by Suzy Hansen
Profile Books When you read a political biography of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you feel you are discovering modern-day dictators around the world. It is not a surprise that he once boasted: “Now there are only two experienced leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”
American journalist Suzy Hansen also puts Erdogan in the same bracket as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – men who insist on (…)

Othering of Muslims is a recurring strategy pursued by Hindutva politics in contemporary India. This was manifested in the recent protests in Kolkata against police atrocities on the students/young protesters in New Delhi. It was reported in Altnews: “From the assembly to press briefings, Suvendu Adhikari repeatedly invoked communal tropes while defending the arrests made over the alleged violence during the July 24 Kolkata solidarity protest. Sixteen people arrested in the case – 15 of them (…)

We were little kids when our parents taught us the National Anthem by heart. That’s because every time the National Anthem was played on the Radio all of us stood up and recited it together, even within the confines of our little home.
When Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India whom we little children fondly called Chacha Nehru, addressed any public meeting, he would end it with raising the slogan ’Jai Hind’ three times and we kids screamed out loudly with enthusiasm (…)

What happened to the crowd in Jantar Mantar? There were different groups from Ambedkarites to liberals and Marxists, but all lived in a small place in the rain and in a hot day and night without a fan except a hand fan. Visiting the place, one felt that there were another group sitting on dais popularly known as CJP leaders and in the evening, Sonam, while on hunger strike, gave a small talk for ten minutes, where he praised Modi, which disappointed me, but for his sacrifice as a hunger (…)

Abstract
Kerala has long been celebrated as one of the most advanced experiments in democratic decentralization in India. The state’s decentralization reforms, particularly following the implementation of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments and the People’s Plan Campaign of 1996, transferred substantial functions, funds, and functionaries to Local Self-Government Institutions (LSGIs). District Panchayats, Block Panchayats, Gram Panchayats, Municipalities and District Planning (…)

I
Introduction: The Hasdeo Arand Conflict in Context
India’s constitutional democracy recognizes Adivasi or tribal communities as distinct social formations having special rights over land and forests. Ironically, some of the country’s richest tribal landscapes continue to be viewed as repositories of mineral wealth. Whenever coal, bauxite, iron ore, or other natural resources are discovered beneath forests inhabited by Scheduled Tribes, the language of development takes precedence over (…)

by Sindhunil Barman Roy
I. Introduction: The Phantom in the Totalitarian Apparatus
When Leon Trotsky formulated his criticism of the Soviet state in the 1930s, he was dealing with a political phenomenon that was not foreseen by standard Marxist theory. The Soviet Union had not gone back to capitalism, but it was clearly not a workers’ democracy. Instead, it had been taken over by what Trotsky called a bureaucratic caste, a parasitic layer of administrators, planners, and party (…)

The first principle of the global economy was simple: economic interdependence would reduce violence. As countries became more integrated through trade, manufacturing and technology, supply chains were meant to provide stability, not competition. That assumption is increasingly falling apart at the seams. Today, supply chains are weapons of geopolitical competition, and strategic considerations, not market efficiency, determine access to critical technology, critical minerals, energy (…)

Headlines of the two-part report on Jyoti Basu’s lecture published in Swastika on 25 July and 1 August 1977.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, Hindu nationalists’ long-cherished dream of winning over Bengal has finally materialised. Significant in many ways, this political development will undoubtedly invite rigorous scrutiny and, in attempting to make sense of it, looking back at the past remains indispensable. As Jawaharlal Nehru (…)