Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• A Little Credit When Due: Gandhi, Nehru Envisioned More Elected Women Leaders | S.N. Sahu

  23 September 2023, by S N Sahu

  21 Sep 2023
  The quest for adequate representation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies is a long pending demand, which India’s founding fathers considered just and necessary.
  The Constitution One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth (Amendment) Bill 2023, providing reservation for women in 33% of seats of the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, including the Assembly of Delhi, has been tabled in Parliament. It is a categorical imperative to flag that Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru put (…)

• “Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam” Mother of All Jumlas!? | Sukla Sen

  23 September 2023, by Sukla Sen

  Unfolding of A Crime Thriller
  "It’s on August 11th, the monsoon session of the Indian Parliament had ended. The most significant development, arguably, being the return of Rahul Gandhi — by far the most visible face and audible voice of the anti-regime forces — getting his lost (or cheated?) membership restored with the help of the Supreme Court — his last hope.
  The other claimant for the top slot is the eventual discussion on the continuing mayhem in Manipur which sort of forced the (…)

• Distress Migration: Trapped in Brick Kilns | S N Tripathy

  23 September 2023, by S N Tripathy

  In India, a perplexing paradox prevails; approximately 26% of its population lives trapped in poverty, struggling to afford basic sustenance, even as the country boasts a surplus of food resources. This curious coexistence of hunger and abundance underscores the intricate facets of security that extend beyond mere survival.
  The 2022 Global Hunger Index reveals India’s disheartening position at 107th among 121 nations with calculable GHI scores. This ranking contrasts starkly with India’s (…)

• Reflections on the Identity of Odisha | Radhakanta Barik

  23 September 2023, by Radhakanta Barik

  It is tradition that contributed in constructing identity of Odiyas and modernity shapes it. Tradition has energy which reflects in intercommunity relations. The best example is this that two individuals belonging to different communities plant peepal tree and offer a feast to village people and create a bond among them. This bond can be called as social capital among diverse castes and communities in Odisha. Social capital turns into active capital which transforms a society and its (…)

• India’s Panchayati Raj, First Step for Women’s Equality in Parliament | Narain Dutt

  23 September 2023

  Panchayats have been working as local self-government institutions in India since ancient times. The Panchayati Raj is a political system, found mainly in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. It is one of the oldest systems of local government in the subcontinent, and its first historical mention is dated to the 250 Christian Eera period. The word raj means ‘rule’ and panchayat means ‘assembly’ (ayat) of five (panch or mukhia) elders. These five were supposed to be respected (…)

• Dark world of Rape Culture in India | Badre Afshan

  23 September 2023

  In August 2022, when the Indian subcontinent was celebrating seventy-five years of its freedom from colonial rule, the State of Gujarat freed on remission eleven men jailed in Panchmahal for life for the gang-rape of a pregnant woman during a religious pogrom in 2002. The men were convicted in early 2008. This was a religious conflict. In March 2022, a 22-year-old Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu’s Virudhunagar was subjected to sexual assault by eight people, including school students, who had (…)

• CPI(M) moving in a blind alley in Bengal | Arun Srivastava

  23 September 2023

  Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI(M) at the 23rd Congress of the party held in Kerala in April 2022, had emphasised “isolate and defeat the BJP” as the central responsibility of the Marxists. He had also pointed out that BJP utilised its government to aggressively further the Hindutva communal agenda of the fascistic RSS and the Modi government has been imposing full-fledged authoritarianism trampling constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights and civil liberties of the (…)

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  Withdraw the order reducing cut off for NEET PG Percentile to Zero - IDPD

  23 September 2023

  Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD)
  Date: 22.09.2023
  PRESS RELEASE
  Withdraw the order reducing cut off for NEET PG to Zero Percentile - IDPD This will benefit the affluent sections only, albeit lower the quality of medical education
  The Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD) has taken serious note of the decision of the National Medical Commission (NMC) to bring down the cut-off percentile for the NEET for postgraduate admissions to Zero. It is reported that (…)

• Canada’s Tryst with Tamil Tigers | M.R. Narayan Swamy

  23 September 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  DBS Jeyaraj, like so many Sri Lankan Tamils, made Canada his home some years after the 1983 anti-Tamil riots swept Colombo, giving much needed oxygen to the nascent Tamil militancy. A journalist, Jeyaraj reported from Sri Lanka the deteriorating ethnic ties as the Tamil separatist campaign went from strength to strength before he quit his country and made Toronto his new home. Like many other Tamils, he too saw the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), initially, as the answer to (…)

• Trust us: how India takes control of personal data | Pradip Thomas

  23 September 2023

  September 13, 2023
  A creeping authoritarianism now extends to the digital sphere in India.
  India is often called the world’s largest democracy. While this brand had cache in the post-independence period, India’s status as a liberal democracy is losing its lustre.
  Democracy indexes that have consistently downgraded India on their lists during the past decade have been dismissed as ’conspiracies’ by the government.
  After India recently slumped 11 places on the Reporters Without Borders (…)