Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Um-Phoon Exposed Man’s Helplessness Before Nature’s Fury

  23 May 2020, by Barun Das Gupta

  Super-cyclone Um-Phoon that hit southern Bengal on May 20 at a velocity of 160 kilometres per hour left a trail of death and devastation behind. It is south Bengal – East and West Medinipur and South and North 24-Parganas — which had to bear the brunt of Nature’s fury at its worst. West Bengal has not witnessed devastation at such a wide scale in recent memory.
  Standing crops were destroyed, houses, especially mud houses, were razed to the ground. The death toll, however, remained (…)

• Exodus as resistance | Ajaz Ashraf

  23 May 2020

  May 18, 2020
  by Ajaz Ashraf | Mumbai
  Bob Marley’s imagining of leaving a corrupted Babylon for the fatherland in his song Exodus, is today the reality of lakhs of migrant workers rejecting the Indian state and returning home
  Migrants walking home to Madhya Pradesh seen on the highway. Pic/sameer markande It is possible you recalled the lyrics of Exodus, the song that reggae singer Bob Marley belted with such élan, as you watched lakhs of migrant workers trudge from cities to villages, (…)

• It’s a Hobson’s Choice for Labour

  23 May 2020

  by Chittarvu Raghu Suspension of crucial labour laws for varying lengths of time by some of the states viz. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya (…)

• Economy Rhyme - Cartoon by Ajith

  23 May 2020

• Bond

  23 May 2020

  On a national highway migrants
  overcrowding a truck were speeding.
  Destinations: their homes
  hundreds of miles away
  from the jobless, moneyless,
  shelterless Covid lockdown.
  There were two young friends
  in the standing space
  at the back of the open truck.
  Suddenly one of them fell sick,
  giving out a suspicious symptom.
  That alerted the other migrants
  who forced him to get down.
  The other friend refusing
  to leave him alone jumped
  off the truck to stay with him.
  He held the (…)

• Mazdoors face tragedy / Conversions to Hinduism / Eid in Nizamuddin

  23 May 2020, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  May 20, 2020
  Those shots of our mazdoors and migrant workers going through the worst possible tragedies, hit. Continue to hit. Something or everything snaps within, makes one wonder what’s become of us, what are we getting reduced to, if the crying mazdoors pleading for food and water, get the cops’ lathis!
  Mind you, all these inhuman tactics heaped on our mazdoors in their own country, by their own sarkar —that is, the sarkar of the day! There couldn’t a bigger tragedy. (…)

• Criticism Cannot Be Sedition

  23 May 2020, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Two things worry me. Deeply. Feeling patriotic, I sat glued to the television set for the Prime Minister’s "address to the nation." After two minutes I felt hungry and moved to the dining table. Like me the majority of people in the south must have lost interest in the Hindi prabhashan. I don’t feel good about my lack of interest in Hindi. But I don’t feel guilty either.
  The second thing that sent me off to the dining table was the nothing-new feeling created by (…)

• Lockdown locks the rural economy: Some Preliminary signals from a surveyed village

  23 May 2020

  by Dr. Atanu Sengupta and Dr. Asish Kumar Pal
  Abstract:
  India is rural based economy. Several workers of several sectors live in rural India. These different workers are basically in unorganized sectors. They are neglected and backward in the society. During the lockdown period announced by both central as well as state government to combat the spread of COVOD- 19 throughout the country, such type of workers are jobless. They are hopeless not to earn any income by which they can (…)

• COVID Crisis and Cultivation: Looming Agrarian Disaster in India

  23 May 2020

  by Annapurna and Navneet Sharma
  “Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not – secretly, at least – submitting to science?” — Arundhati Roy
  The covid -19 and ensuing crisis, in all domains of human life whether social, political or economic is going to be a juncture where the life, empathy, development and harmony will also be studied in pre and post covid phases. This humongous crisis will also have its impact on the basic requirements for (…)

• Relief in the Package

  23 May 2020

  by Suranjita Ray
  It is perturbing that it took a pandemic to realise that ‘right to life’ and ‘right to livelihood’ are not dichotomous. Though policy makers are struggling to balance the priorities of public health and economic well-being during a pandemic and nationwide lockdown, reports across the country reveal extreme hardships for a large segment of society whose survival is under threat. A big challenge unparalleled in several decades is the loss of resources of livelihood in the (…)