Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, August 27, 2022

  26 August 2022

  Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, August 27, 2022
  India stands at 142nd position out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index 2021. Multiple parameters are used to make credible comparative assessments on questions of media independence, legislation, freedom of the press, freedom to write and report for journalists, etc. Media barons are doing brisk business, but media freedoms are not in great health in India. The use of repressive state apparatus and also the use of powerful (…)

• Diamond Jubilee or Rusted Freedom? (Part II) | Kobad Ghandy

  26 August 2022, by Kobad Ghandy

  This is the second half and concluding part of the article by the same name. In the first section which appeared in the Mainstream, August 20, 2022 we dealt with the: State of the Country as it exists today; the impact on the people and environment; the impact of two centuries of colonial Rule & the process of Globalisation worldwide. In this concluding section, we shall deal with the impact of Globalisation on India and the Swadeshi Alternative. Here we will also give a call to action (…)

• India’s Public Healthcare in the 21st Century: New Institutional and Financing Architecture | Govind Bhattacharjee

  26 August 2022

  by Dr Govind Bhattacharjee
  Abstract
  The public healthcare system in India is today based on an insurance model that only takes care of the curative healthcare needs of vulnerable sections by subsidising the cost of their treatments provided by private healthcare providers who operate in a largely unregulated market. Such a model tends to become financially unsustainable and cannot be supported by tax revenues alone. The rest of the population depends entirely on private providers which (…)

• First, Talk About Employment Creation Not For A Few, But For Many | Sunil Ray

  26 August 2022, by Sunil Roy

  Introduction
  Let me begin by quoting of what I wrote a couple of months ago in an article titled “Reinventing the spirit of freedom” published by Mainstream on November 27, 2021.
  “Perhaps the next wave of the resistance movement (after farmers’ movement against farm laws had begun) is in its embryonic stage. It is against unemployment and new labor laws to be followed by barbaric social discrimination that manifests in all forms and holds back civilizational progress. The parade of the (…)

• Marx’s mathematical manuscripts - an overview | Sankar Ray

  26 August 2022, by Sankar Ray

  “Mathematics itself is always an empty calculus, pure syntax. To use it in social theory, we must give its terms meanings. We need semantics. We must ‘interpret’ the calculus”, wrote Roger Kopl, professor of finance at the Whitman School of Management of Syracuse. Marx scholar and polymath Pradip Baksi in his latest book, ‘Karl Marx and Mathematics, A Collection of Essays in Three Parts refers to Bruno Bukhberger, professor of Computer Mathematics, Research Institute for Symbolic (…)

• Separating the Wheat from the Chaff in the Age of Fake News and Misinformation Syndrome: A Case from Kerala | Jos Chathukulam

  26 August 2022, by Jos Chathukulam

  Abstract
  Dissemination of fake news on social media platforms and web portals, especially planted news with communal overtones is increasing at an alarming rate in India. The recent attempts to communalise protests against a tainted bureaucrat, who is one of the prime accused in the death of a journalist in Kerala, is the biggest example in this regard. Protest by a section of Muslim groups against an IAS officer, who happened to be an individual from Hindu community, was given a communal (…)

• Can we expect the apex court to revise its remission decree of May? | Faraz Ahmad

  26 August 2022, by Faraz Ahmad

  As new skeletons tumble out of the cupboard of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) every day, it is becoming evident that the 14 years of incarceration the 11 convicts of the Bilkis Bano gangrape along with her mother and two sisters, and barbaric murder of her three-year-old daughter before her eyes in Gujarat’s Dahod district on March 2/3, 2002 and 14 others members of her family, was an eyewash with prime accused enjoying frequent furloughs and paroles during this supposed (…)

• Release of culprits in the Bilkis rape case exposes the misogyny of the VHP-RSS & BJP | Arun Srivastava

  26 August 2022

  by Arun Srivastava
  THE SUPREME COURT has issued notices to the BJP government of Gujarat and the Modi government at the Centre asking them to ascertain whether there was application of mind by a government panel that on 13 May granted remission to the eleven convicts in the Bilkis Bano rape case. The question that should have been put to the Gujarat government was to ask if it had the ‘power of remission’ in the matter.
  Bilkis Bano is the victim of the RSS and the Modi government’s (when (…)

• The Ugly Underside of the Everyday Sense of Humour in India | Gaganjot Kaur

  26 August 2022

  by Gaganjot Kaur *
  Are you already offended when someone preludes a joke with, “Sorry, this may be racist/sexist/classist/ableist... but it’s funny...”? And, then, they ask, “Why can’t you just take a joke as a joke for once?”. Many of us find ourselves in these situations every now and then — sometimes with colleagues, or with friends, and, of course, a lot of times within our families. I earnestly believe in the potential of humour and how it can make people connect with one another and (…)

• Himachal Pradesh’s Vulnerability to Floods and Landslides is Increasing Dangerously | Bharat Dogra

  26 August 2022, by Bharat Dogra

  Following excessive rain in many parts of Himachal Pradesh on August 20, the situation deteriorated rapidly and flash floods as well as landslides were reported from many areas. In a particularly sad incident, 8 members of a single family in Gauhar ke Kashan village were buried under their collapsed house and died. In the same district nearly 900 students and their teachers who had gathered in Mandi district for a sports event were trapped for some time due to a flash flood, spreading a lot (…)