Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• PM Modi resets Council of Ministers: social inclusion and loyalty as prime drivers | P S Jayaramu

  16 July 2021, by P S Jayaramu

  by P. S. Jayaramu*
  12th July, 2021
  The much awaited expansion and reshuffle of the Union Council of Ministers took place a few days ago. As is his wont, Prime Minister Modi sprang a few surprises by showing the exit door to six of his senior cabinet colleagues and four Ministers of State, one of whom held independent charge. The ostensible explanation for axing the senior ministers is their poor performance In the evaluation exercises carried out by the Party and the Government. There (…)

• Inter-services rivalry amongst armed forces: why it is bad? | Bhartendu Kumar Singh

  16 July 2021, by Bhartendu Kumar Singh

  Inter-services rivalry amongst armed forces is ubiquitous in most countries and India is not an exception to this competitive politics. Numerical predominance of Army in national defence architecture notwithstanding, modern warfare is mostly about optimising different services towards a joint warfare strategy. Therefore, when the Indian Air Force was recently described as a ‘supporting arm’, it amounted to reassertion of ‘army being the mainstay of modern warfare system’. Such archival (…)

• Language as an Identity Marker: Placing Language Movements in Ethnic Conundrum of South Asia | Akansha Chandra

  16 July 2021

  by Akansha Chandra*
  Language has always been an important identity marker in the domain of Social Sciences. Within the framework of ethnicity, language movements have played a significant role in the politics of identity. The South Asian region especially has been rigged with such movements as the concept of ethnicity started to become more popular with the era of decolonization. People started identifying themselves with their ethnic historicity, and the repression of the language of the (…)

• Why There is Compelling Need for Comprehensive Inquiry Into Uttar Pradesh Panchayati Raj Elections | Bharat Dogra

  16 July 2021, by Bharat Dogra

  While violence, intimidation and other more obvious aspects of irregularities which marred the recently held three-month long Panchayati Raj (PR) elections in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) are now widely known, there is still urgent need for a more formal and detailed inquiry into various worrying aspects of these elections. There are four obvious reasons for this.
  Firstly, the more obvious violence and intimidation, as captured on videos, were only one part of the (…)

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  D R Chaudhry - an organic socialist intellectual of the Haryana peasantry | Pritam Singh

  16 July 2021

  by Pritam Singh*
  Daulat Ram Chaudhry (1935-2021) — a teacher, public intellectual and social activist — spent his whole life articulating progressive ideas and building socially transformative organisational structures and movements in Haryana. This illustrious life came to an end on June 2 due to health complications caused by Covid-19. He breathed his last at Rohtak in his room with all his family by his side.
  He was born in a farming family in the village of Chautala in Haryana and (…)

• Obituary: Vir K. Chopra | Ranbir Singh

  16 July 2021, by Ranbir Singh

  by Prof. Ranbir Singh Remembering a Multifaceted Personality
  The demise of Vir K. Chopra is a great loss for the academic fraternity and Bollywood. After getting a first class first masters degree in Economics from Kashmir University Srinagar he had joined the prestigious Tata Consultation Service and has served on very important positions in hotel management. Thereafter he had obtained PhD degree in Political Science from London School of (…)

• Master Plan of Delhi 2041 & Environment | Jeevesh Gupta

  16 July 2021

  by Jeevesh Gupta*
  The Great Greek philosopher, Socrates, once said, “By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities”.
  While the DDA has been opaque about sharing the promised versus achieved status for previous master plans, the new master plan which comes up every 20 years is nothing but old wine in a new bottle!
  The subject of Environment has managed to shift from chapter 9 (page 96) of Master Plan of Delhi (MPD) (…)

• Business of Othering | Humra Quraishi

  16 July 2021, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS 14 July 2021
  With more and more communal characters on the prowl, can we declare communalism, or to put it along the desi strain ‘communal-pan’, as a full-fledged disease or disorder of the day! Yes, it ought to be termed and notified as a disease or disorder, which is growing and spreading out in our country, un-checked and un-controlled! Today the Right-Wing brigades and Fascist lobbies are expanding and with that out to destroy structures, human and otherwise.
  In these recent (…)

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  An Ambassador India Doesn’t Remember | M R Narayan Swamy

  16 July 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo:
  The Life and Times of Syud Hossain
  by N.S. Vinodh
  Simon & Schuster India (December 29, 2020) | ISBN13: 9788194752028 Pages: 378; Price: Rs 799
  __0__
  He was an outstanding journalist whose writings and mesmerizing oratory the Raj detested; he went into self-imposed life in the West after eloping with a sister of Jawaharlal Nehru who later became Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit; he kept the torch of Indian nationalism flying in England and the US; he was (…)

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  Padma Bridge in Bangladesh without World Bank stakes | Mizanur Rahman

  16 July 2021

  Review by Mizanur Rahman
  People build bridges to connect both sides; ironically, the politics of financing behind the Padma Bridge was a divide. Our national interests and social culture used to be promoted by intellectual groups, media and academic institutions. Their roles are fading away, and the global multinational organisations made them powerless, subservient and redundant. Moreover, some self-serving Bangladeshis- mostly in high chairs- do not care about protecting the country’s (…)