Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Interrogating the Death of Father Stan Swamy (1937-2021) | Arup Kumar Sen

  30 July 2021, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Recent death of Father Stan Swamy in judicial custody amply testifies that we are living in a State of Exception: “...modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system”. (Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, The University of Chicago Press, 2005) (…)

• Civil society must strive to complete the unfinished task to protect the Bhima Koregaon victims of injustice | Arun Srivastava

  30 July 2021, by Arun Srivastava

  by Arun Srivastava
  A series of remembrances have since been held in honour of Father Stan Swamy, Jesuit priest and defender of the rights of Jharkhand’s tribal communities, with Church leaders, social activists and academics shedding their tears to console his death in the custody of the NIA.
  Swamy was made to languish in the jail custody nearly for a year. NIA used the dirty designs to thwart his trail. Denial of trial is indeed a sad commentary on the functioning of judiciary which (…)

• Marx in the MEGA | Pradip Baksi

  30 July 2021

  by Pradip Baksi *
  “The history of mankind is like palaeontology. Owing to a certain judicial blindness, even the best minds fail to see, on principle, what lies in front of their noses. Later, when the time has come, we are surprised that there are traces everywhere of what we failed to see”.—Мarx to Engels, 25 March1868 (MECW 42: 557).
  “... and here, as everywhere, it is important to tear off the veil of mystery from science”. “Taylor’s theorem, MacLaurin’s theorem and Lagrangian (…)

• Stakhanovism from the 1930s helped create today’s intense corporate workplace culture | Costea & Watt

  30 July 2021

  by Bogdan Costea and Peter Watt
  June 29, 2021
  One summer night in August, 1935, a young Soviet miner named Alexei Stakhanov managed to extract 102 tonnes of coal in a single shift. This was nothing short of extraordinary (according to Soviet planning, the official average for a single shift was seven tonnes).
  Stakhanov shattered this norm by a staggering 1,400%. But the sheer quantity involved was not the whole story. It was Stakhanov’s achievement as an individual that became the most (…)

• Beware UN Food Systems Summit Trojan Horse | Jomo Kwame Sundaram

  30 July 2021

  by Jomo Kwame Sundaram
  KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 26 2021 (IPS) - Undoubtedly, the world needs to reform existing food systems to better serve humanity and sustainable development. But the United Nations World Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) must be consistent with UN-led multilateralism.
  For the first time ever, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a partnership of some of the world’s most powerful corporations, is partnering the UN in launching the Summit, now scheduled for September, with its (…)

• Understanding Floods, Living With Them While Reducing Destruction | Bharat Dogra

  30 July 2021, by Bharat Dogra

  India is not alone in experiencing the paradox of more areas becoming exposed to floods even as the expenditure on flood protection goes on increasing. Many countries have experienced this . Clearly we need a review of basic thinking related to flood protection.
  There are some floods which are very highly destructive and/or prolonged. Clearly we need to check such floods. Some of the most destructive floods in recent years have been those caused by embankment breaches and sudden release of (…)

• Relationship of Ecology and Environment - Geographer’s concerns | Kalita & Barman

  30 July 2021

  by K. Kalita and R. Barman *
  It has long been evident that there is a close relationship of human society and its activities with the modern concept of ecology-ecosystem in an area, region or a country or the globe as a whole. In the beginning, the term ecology or its equivalent one, such as oekologie coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1886, ethology and hexicology used respectively by I.G.S Hilaire and S.G. Mivart before Haeckel had their only strong based in biological sciences. Today the term (…)

• Covid-19 Pandemic and the Political: Deficient Political Worldwide | Kunal Kumar Yadav

  30 July 2021

  by Kunal Kumar Yadav *
  Covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event in history. For the first time a pandemic has affected the humanity on such a large scale. It has affected the social, political and economic aspects of the human life in equally devastating manner. The pandemic has brought an unprecedented political problem in front of the mankind. Political is basically the articulation of the public events in a democratic manner. The pandemic has affected the Political in a (…)

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  A British View of Colonial India | M R Narayan Swamy

  30 July 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  __0__
  Peace, Poverty and Betrayal: A New History of British India
  by Roderick Matthews
  HarperCollins India
  20 June 2021
  Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354227325 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354227325
  Peace, Poverty and Betrayal: A New History of British India by Roderick Matthews https://www.amazon.in/dp/9354227325/
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  If freelance writer Roderick Matthews is to be believed, Indians complain too much about British (mis)rule of the sprawling (…)

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  Book Review: Gandhi’s ingenuously reconstructed autobiography | Suhas Borker

  30 July 2021, by Suhas Borker

  RESTLESS AS MERCURY:
  My Life As a Young Man
  by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
  Aleph Book Company | January 2021 | 400 p
  ISBN: 9788194874140
  https://www.alephbookcompany.com __0__
  As I read the preface by Gopalkrishna Gandhi to Restless as Mercury: My Life As A Young Man, I was reminded of what his elder brother and professor of philosophy Ramchandra Gandhi told me 30 years ago. Back in 1991, we were working together to make Jagran aur Gavahi: Tees (…)