Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Vande Bharat Beats China, COVID | TJS George

  7 August 2020, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  August 2, 2020
  India’s view of, and dealings with, China are becoming curiouser and curiouser. Suddenly we are told that dozens of Chinese apps have been banned. Reasons cited include security and privacy. How come these became issues only now? For long China, like all other topics, has been a provider of opportunities for our Prime Minister to display his showmanship; remember his donning South Indian veshti and angavastram for a meeting with Xi Jinping? All that is (…)

• Corona has endangered the existence of human race | Arun Srivastava

  7 August 2020

  by Arun Srivastava
  While evolving the strategy to fight the corona pandemic, the policymakers found the phrase “social distancing” as the most convenient tool to fight the menace. In their discernment probably this was the most effective device. But unfortunately they could not comprehend that it has a dangerous dimension and it would expose society’s fragility.
  A crisis of this dimension often provides the opportunity for a society to reinvent both its best aspects and the worst, but (…)

• And So, They Began To Walk Again | Anshu Saluja

  7 August 2020

  by Anshu Saluja
  Nearly three-quarters of a century ago, millions of people were forced to march across newly created state borders. Disoriented and dispossessed, they had to move for reasons that were not of their own making, but the effects of which were to rewrite their lives and lifeworlds. Many scholars have captured the traumatic processes of tearing apart of homes and settlements, severing of ties, snapping of relationships, and the resulting social rupture, produced by the tragedy (…)

• Kashmir Let Down Even by India’s Parliament | Mustafa Khan

  7 August 2020

  Never before had Kashmir felt that it was not part of India. All this on account of India itself and its delinquency in the hour of need. The cumulative long term shadow is the startling revelation of Omar Abdullah in his interview published in Indian Express of July 28 2020.

• Akhtaruzzaman Elius: A Journey from Partition to Emancipation | Debatra K. Dey

  7 August 2020

  by Debatra K. Dey
  (Abstract)
  Reading Akhtaruzzaman Elius (henceforth Elius) against the backdrop of both undivided and divided Bengal is painful as it depicts the horrified exclusion of have-nots both before and after partition. By profession a college teacher in Bengali born just before the partition, Eius has composed only two novels one in the context of 1971 and another in the context of partition along with twenty-five odd short stories and a few Articles. He identifies his time (…)

• The Tragedy of Being Overqualified for a Job | Mohammad Ashraf Khwaja

  7 August 2020

  by Mohammad Ashraf Khwaja
  Imagine a hypothetical scenario: The UPSC declares all aspirants who have obtained education beyond graduation ineligible for the covetous Civil Service examination. Additionally, such a rule is given retrospective effect. How would our top bureaucrats react? For many of them might have Masters or Doctorate at the time of applying for Civil Service. Would that rule stand in judiciary? Would that be considered fair and productive for administering the political (…)

• Understanding The Myth of ‘Socialist Commodity Production’: A Response To Sankar Ray | Murzban Jal

  7 August 2020

  by Murzban Jal
  Sankar Ray’s review of Paresh Chattopadhyay’s book Socialism and Commodity production. Essays in Marx Revival (a book dedicated to the great Marxologist Maximilien Rubel) is not only a timely intervention in understanding Marx’s critique of political economy, but also serves as a reminder as to how post-Marx Marxism lost its moorings because it was more bothered with the secondary texts on Marx’s critique of capitalism than with the original ones penned by Marx. It was Lenin (…)

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  Book Review: Inquisition Mode - Victor Serge’s Final Notebooks | Tariq Ali

  7 August 2020

  A defender of the Bolshevik revolution and a decades-long critic of Stalinism, Serge in his final notebook details the fight against fascism, capital and the Soviet bureaucracy by a not uncritical intimate of Trotsky who remained a lifelong Marxist.

• Belarus: Scramble for heart of Europe | M. K. Bhadrakumar

  7 August 2020, by M K Bhadrakumar

  August 4, 2020
  The Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration Condoleeza Rice once described Belarus as “the last true remaining dictatorship in the heart of Europe.” She held out the assurance that it was “time for change to come to Belarus.” That was during her visit to next-door Lithuania in April 2005. Fifteen years have passed. Rice’s promise is yet to be realised. Is the Trump administration following up?
  By all indications, change is in the air in Belarus. For good or (…)

• Everyone’s an Antiracist. Now What? Recognizing that Black people deserve dignity isn’t progress | Erin Aubry Kaplan

  7 August 2020

  by Erin Aubry Kaplan
  Recognizing that Black people deserve dignity isn’t progress.
  The new unbridled enthusiasm for the cause of Black lives reminds me of the Dr. Seuss fable “Horton Hears a Who.”
  A kindly elephant named Horton becomes aware of a whole planet of creatures called Whos living on a single speck of dust. Horton can hear the Whos perfectly, and accepts them as friends and equals. Horton’s friends, who can’t see or hear the Whos, denounce him as crazy, and a few set out to (…)