Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Odd recurring lapse by scholars in India | Arup Mahartana

  1 June, by Arup Maharatna

  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 Missing ’P’: Political Representation, Caste Power, and the Analytical Silence at the Heart of the SEEEPC Exercise | Santhosh Juvvaka

  1 June

  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 (…)

• India’s Auto Industry Under War Pressure | Piyali Kumar, Utpal Kumar De

  1 June

  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 (…)

• When Agriculture Becomes an Unwanted Portfolio: Kerala’s Agrarian Crisis and the Search for an Ecological Future | Jos Chathukulam & A. M. Jose

  1 June, by A. M. Jose, Jos Chathukulam

  [(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 (…)

• How the US Visa Policy Exacerbates India’s Oligopolistic Market and Inequality | Ajay Kumar Mishra

  1 June, by Ajay Kumar Mishra

  The Government of India has been evaluating the impact of the US restriction on H-1 B visas on skilled talent mobility, technology development, innovation, economic growth, competitiveness, and wealth creation in India. The impact of the modifications to the US H-1B visa policy for Indians on the rising firm concentration ratio in India’s current oligopoly market structure will be explained in this article. The proposed $100,000 fee per H-1B application for companies and a new $250 Visa (…)

• How the US–China reset recasts the QUAD | Anuradha Chenoy

  1 June, by Anuradha M. Chenoy

  May 27, 2026
  With the shift in US–China relations, India is emerging as the strategic cog in the US wheel, Pakistan as a tactical partner, NATO as the anchor of the Atlantic alliance, and QUAD countries as a tool to serve the Indo‑Pacific.
  On May 16, 2026, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping formally acknowledged what has long been in motion: a paradigm shift in US–China relations. Beijing frames it as “constructive strategic stability”; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls it a (…)

• The Wider Reality Missing in Most Discourse on Wars | Bharat Dogra

  1 June, by Bharat Dogra

  Increasing concern has been expressed in recent times regarding the several dangerous ongoing wars and civil wars and the possibilities of their escalation and expansion. While any discourse motivated by peace objectives is most welcome, we argue here that a lot of recent discussion may be missing out on a wider and very important reality that has two important aspects. Firstly, human society may be becoming more of a violent society with intolerably high levels of physical and emotional (…)

• The Intellectuals | Anton Pannekoek (1935)

  1 June

  October 12, 1935
  The intellectual middle class, the engineers, scientists, technical employees, etc. are a necessary part of industrial production, quite as indispensable as the workers themselves. Technical progress, in replacing workers by machines, tends to increase their number. Therefore their class interests and their class character must be of increasing importance in the social struggles.
  Their growing numbers reflect the growing importance of science and theory in the production (…)

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  Review of Harris’s Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income | Domonkos Sik

  1 June

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income
  by Neal Harris
  Manchester University Press
  2026. 184 pp.,
  ISBN 9781526172228
  __0__
  Reviewed by Domonkos Sik
  Neal Harris is taking on a daunting quest: critiquing those emancipatory movements that, by their own definition and according to the mainstream view of Marxist and critical sociology, are supposed to widen the

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  Documentary Film: Indigenous Seeds, Forests in Madhya Pradesh | Suma Josson

  1 June