Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Why Our Rulers Like Pandemics | TJS George

  26 June 2020, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Let’s face it. The corona emergency that has dislocated our world will not go away any time soon. Before it does, it will have changed our ideas of life and living. Abandoning the usual practice of hugging friends to show our regards for them is merely an outward sign of the changes overtaking us. The very opposite of hugging, social distancing, is the new norm.
  There is a political angle to the corona crisis which is more worrying. Any kind of crisis gives unlimited (…)

• The Supreme Court shirked its constitutional and moral responsibility during the Pandemic | Atul and Sandeep Pandey

  26 June 2020

  The COVID 19 lockdown in India has witnessed an unfathomable scale of internal migration, displacement, tragedies, and human sufferings not seen since the time of partition 70 years ago. The haphazard manner in which the government implemented the lockdown resulted in absolute chaos when crores were forced by cruel circumstances to go back to their homes using any means and routes they could get hold of. In the absence of proper transport facilities, many decided to walk hundreds and even thousands of miles in the scorching heat of May. A few hundreds of them perished on the way due to hunger, heat and thirst, and those who could somehow reach their final destinations now face a bleak future.

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  New Reasons for Immediate Release of Political Prisoners

  26 June 2020, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  While there have also been important democratic and justice-based reasons for early release of political prisoners, in the new situation caused by the spread of coronavirus infections there are strong reasons for their immediate release all over the world. In particular there are strong reasons for immediate release of all those who have been imprisoned for political dissent and in effect for merely exercising their democratic right to free expression.
  Prisons in most (…)

• Photo from World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, Wroclaw 1948

  26 June 2020

  From: Left to right Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, Sri Lankan architect Minette DaSilva, American sculptor Jo Davidson, and Mulk Raj Anand at the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, Wroclaw1948. Source: Polska Agencja Prasowa

• Peeling Away the Façade: Viewing Savarkar through the Lens of Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History | Anshu Saluja

  26 June 2020

  In the recent past, a major controversy was stirred when the name of V.D. Savarkar, one of the most prominent ideologues of Hindu right-wing politics of all time, was floated for the award of Bharat Ratna, the country’s top civilian honour. This suggestion is not to be viewed as the outcome of a hasty demand, triggered by a sudden impulse disconnected from the existing political context. Such a demand represents nothing new, rather it forms yet another link in the long and disconcerting chain of calibrated moves, devised to raise Savarkar to the status of an eminent national figure and create a cult of heroism around his life.

• Imperialism in Crisis: The Struggle against Racism and War - Report from a Webinar | Jahanzaib Choudhry and Archishman Raju

  26 June 2020

  All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation held an international webinar on 21 June 2020 entitled “Imperialism in Crisis: the struggle against racism and war” featuring speakers and participants from the United States, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The webinar discussed in detail how profound the political crisis in the United States was. As the leader of the multilateral system established after the end of the Second World War, as well as the undisputed world-leader after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a political crisis in the US has consequences for the whole world.

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  Statement from Indian Civil Society Calling on Government of India to Support Innovation and Access to Covid-19 Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Vaccines

  26 June 2020

  COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11th March 2020. There is an urgent need for policies that will effectively encourage and regulate research, production and access to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19 to ensure that they are accessible to all without any discrimination.

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  India: Letter to the Chief Minister Maharashtra regarding inhuman conditions in jails

  26 June 2020

  DOCUMENT
  The Hon’ble Chief Minister Maharashtra
  25 June 2020
  Subject: Urgent action needed towards inhuman conditions in Maharashtra jails
  Dear Sir
  As we mark the 45th anniversary of the day when emergency was imposed in the country and thousands of political dissenters were locked up in the prisons, we wish to bring to your notice the deplorable and abysmal condition of jails and quarantine facilities in Maharashtra. The conditions were recently flagged by Gautam Navlakha, a (…)

• COVID and We, the migrants of India | Aashish K Shukla

  26 June 2020

  by Aashish K Shukla
  ’We’ are the framers of the world’s largest constitution and the pillars of the largest democracy. We have equally contributed in nation-building. We altogether have brought India to that level in the last seventy-three years, that even today in this crisis, we are saying with great confidence that ‘the world is looking towards India’. But we, who made this India are on the streets for the last several months and unfortunately no one is there to see us. ‘We, the (…)

• Covid-19: Building Resilience to Pandemics | K N Ninan

  26 June 2020

  If there is one lesson that the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us, it is as to how governments in the developed and developing world have been caught napping and unprepared to meet a disaster of this nature and scale. Even after the global community overcomes the pandemic questions will linger on as to why governments including the Indian Government failed to act in time such as closing its international borders even though first reports of the corona virus appeared in January 2020.