Mainstream Weekly

Ambani Wedding: The Need for State-Regulation in Indian Capitalism | Gilbert Sebastian

Gilbert Sebastian — 2024-08-03T19:12:41Z

The wedding of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, the richest business tycoon in Asia, during July 12 through 14, 2024 and the pre-wedding ceremonies spread over six months before that, have opened a window to the glaring inequality in Indian society. The vulgar display of wealth in the gaudy extravaganza became a cruel joke in the face of the mass impoverishment of millions of people in a country that houses the largest number of poor people in the world. It became a series of (…)

- 2024

Decoding the Momentous Significance of the Lok Sabha Elections Verdict, 2024 | Gilbert Sebastian

Gilbert Sebastian — 2024-06-07T22:04:23Z

Perhaps, the greatest thing that we can observe about the verdict in the Lok Sabha Elections, 2024 is that the popular mandate has safeguarded the Constitution of India. The campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – Indian People's Party) was clearly indicating that it wanted to get 400-plus i.e., a two-third majortiy in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament so that they could change the Constitution of India in the direction of a Hindu Rashtra, possibly in the (…)

- 2024

Reflections on Consent

Gilbert Sebastian — 2016-04-30T17:14:18Z

“[W]hen we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.” — Simone de Beauvoir1
The age of consent in rape cases in India was raised from 16 years to 18 years through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013. It led to many eyebrows being raised and not surpri-singly so since the global average of the age of consent still (…)

- 2016

Randhir Singh: A Life Dedicated to Keeping Alive the Idea of Socialism

Gilbert Sebastian — 2016-04-10T18:48:09Z

TRIBUTE
Prof Randhir Singh, a well-known Marxist activist-intellectual who used to be a teacher at the Department of Political Science in Delhi University, passed away at the age of 94 on January 31, 2016. I had met him for the first time in 1992 when he came to the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He stood out as someone different as a critical scholar thinking of contemporary issues from within the framework of classical Marxism. In March 2010, a friend of mine from Punjab (…)

- 2016

Sexual Assaults and Feminist Sensibilities

Gilbert Sebastian — 2013-07-01T05:05:55Z

COMMUNICATION
Krishna Majumdar's response (Mainstream, April 27, 2013) to my piece (“Patriarchy and the Rise in Sexual Assaults in India: An Explanation”, Mainstream, March 16, 2013) calls for certain clarifications as she has, at places, grossly misrepresented my views and has missed out the main thrust of my arguments. Moreover, her arguments reveal an orientation which is somewhat commonplace in the mainstream feminist movements in India, namely, its implicit privileged caste bias and (…)

- 2013

Patriarchy and the Rise in Sexual Assaults in India: An Explanation

Gilbert Sebastian — 2013-03-20T21:12:45Z

WOMEN'S WORLD
“We must understand that [they] have committed a crime, but the source of this crime lies in society. It is true that [they] themselves carried out this crime; but a great part of the culpability was transmitted to them by society.” —Mao Zedong1
For all their silences and misgivings, the unprecedented mass protests in Delhi and elsewhere against the ghastly gang-rape of a 23-year old girl in a Delhi bus on December 16, 2012, has helped awaken social consciousness and (…)

- 2013

Remembering R.S. Rao and His Critical Marxist Tradition

Gilbert Sebastian — 2011-10-19T18:05:00Z

TRIBUTE
Prof R.S. Rao (74), a retired Professor from Sambhalpur University and a long time intellectual of radical politics in India, passed away on June 17, 2011 in New Delhi. He had suffered a stroke and was in the ventilator for around twenty days. The inevitability of death takes away from us his lively and jovial company and the sharp intellect combined with unswerving commitment to the cause of the common people.
Remembering the critical Marxist tradition of R.S. Rao, we would (…)

- 2011

Reminiscing the Political Legacy of Balagopal

Gilbert Sebastian — 2009-11-07T17:44:39Z

TRIBUTE
This condolence note for K. Balagopal, the eminent human rights activist who expired at the age of 57 from a cardiac arrest on October 8, 2009, is motivated by the feeling that the political man in Balagopal is often given a short shrift.
As with Marx, Balagopal had also undergone an epistemological break in 1993. So we had two Balagopals: the early Balagopal, the Marxist-Leninist who was an advocate of ‘new democratic revolution', and the late Balagopal, who turned a (…)

- November 2009

Getting to the Roots of Global Terror

Gilbert Sebastian — 2009-01-26T12:19:16Z

The Mumbai terror strikes on November 26, 2008 and a number of other terror attacks in the Indian cities have shocked our conscience and our sensibilities. The strikes on locations of the rich and powerful like the Taj and Trident hotels in the metropolis have woken up the Indian security establishment, something which did not happen when bombs exploded in busy marketplaces and railway stations. The visual media revealed its class bias by paying little attention to the first terror strike in (…)

- January 2009

Kerala People's Plan Revisited

Gilbert Sebastian — 2008-03-10T06:16:18Z

Although the decentralised approach for governance and development had gained wide recognition in India even before independence, it was only as late as in 1992 that this approach got the much needed constitutional recognition with the enactment of the 73rd Constitution Amend-ment Act. In order to institutionalise participatory democracy and decentralised planning in the rural areas, Article 243G mandates that the panchayats should prepare plans for ‘economic development and social justice' (…)

- March 8, 2008