Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Unveiling the Dark Side of the Belt and Road Initiative: A Global Environmental Crisis | Megan Rodrigues, Karamala Areesh Kumar

  25 August 2023

  In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping presented the world with his ambitious brainchild, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Hailed as a modern-day ’silk road,’ this monumental infrastructure project aims to connect nations through a vast network of high-speed railways, power plants, ports, roads, bridges, airports, and tourism developments. While the media has extensively covered the BRI’s geopolitical impact and China’s rising dominance, the equally pressing concern of its environmental (…)

• Appointment of VCs in Karnataka: Options before the Government | P. S. Jayaramu

  25 August 2023

  With the suggestion by former minister and senior Congressman Prof. B. K. Chandrashekar recently for a Standing Committee consisting of heads of premier institutions like the IISC, the IIM, Bangalore, and the National Law School of India University for the selection of Vice Chancellors to the public universities in the State, the debate over the issue of appointment of VCs should acquire prominence again. It is highly desirable that the Government of Karnataka takes a serious look at the (…)

• How India can counter religion in politics | Rahul Mukherji

  25 August 2023

  August 20, 2023
  Six clear pathways to help India become more democratic and secular and counter the religious polarisation of politics.
  Less than a year out from a general election, India is in a political flux.
  The nation is dominated by populist, religiously polarised communal politics instead of being the secular, democratic and inclusive republic imagined in its constitution.
  Indian society is governed in a largely majoritarian way — where there is little room for minority needs (…)

• The bogey of BJP’s new constituency: Pasmanda and Muslim women | Faraz Ahmad

  25 August 2023, by Faraz Ahmad

  In the run up to the next round of assembly elections followed immediately thereafter by the countrywide Lok Sabha polls, scheduled for early next year, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) taking a cue from its unchallenged supremo, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started drumming up the bogey of wooing Pasmanda Muslims and Muslim women.
  Some time back addressing a rally in Bhopal Modi publicly beat his breast on the “exploitation of Pasmanda Muslims” by the upper caste Muslims and (…)

• Partition: 14 August 1947 | Sagari Chhabra

  25 August 2023, by Sagari Chhabra

  We fought for freedom but they decided, our land, our very own homeland would be divided. No one knows of the mayhem and madness that did descend; take this as my testament: the knives at the nape of necks, the rapes of women, their jumping into wells, followed by blood-thirsty yells.
  The people sleep-walked with their belongings, then just dropped them, unable to carry further; mothers abandoned their babies hoping they would find them again; a line drawn, had torn and turned our world (…)

• Message from a Pakistani on India’s moonlanding: Well done neighbour | Naeem Sadiq

  25 August 2023

  .[The following message from a Pakistani Citizen has circulated on WhatsApp groups in the past 24 hours. It is being reproduced here in public interest]
  India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft making a soft landing close to the South Pole region of moon, is a momentous event for which India deserves heartfelt felicitations and compliments. As a neighbor, I am happy and proud of India’s achievement and join the Indian people in their moment of joy and celebration. I hope that we can begin to (…)

• Pakistani minority-rights activists demand justice after church attacks | Abdullah Zahid with Beena Sarwar

  25 August 2023

  August 21, 2023
  by Abdullah Zahid with Beena Sarwar
  After the first Minority Rights March days before attacks on the Christian community, protestors gather again in Karachi to reiterate demands to end violence in the name of religion
  “Manzoor Masih – will be remembered!… The Christians of Shanti Nagar – will be remembered!… Rimsha Masih – will be remembered!… ”
  Activist and dancer Sheema Kermani led the chanting, evoking the names of a long list of Pakistani Christian individuals and (…)

• Graphic Resource: An expanded BRICS to have more than half of world’s fossil fuels

  25 August 2023

• Russia: Letter From Prison | Boris Kagarlitsky

  25 August 2023

  August 17, 2023
  This is not the first time in my life. I was locked up under Brezhnev, beaten and threatened with death under Yeltsin. And now it’s the second arrest under Putin. Those in power change, but the tradition of putting political opponents behind bars, alas, remains. But the willingness of many people to make sacrifices for their beliefs, for freedom and social rights remains unchanged.
  I think that the current arrest can be considered a recognition of the political (…)

• Art and Socialism | William Morris (1891)

  25 August 2023

  by William Morris
  My friends, I want you to look into the relations of Art to Commerce, using the latter word to express what is generally meant by it; namely, that system of competition in the market which is indeed the only form which most people now-a-days suppose that Commerce can take.
  Now whereas there have been times in the world’s history when Art held the supremacy over Commerce; when Art was a good deal, and Commerce, as we understand the word, was a very little; so now on the (…)