Mainstream Weekly

SIR Vote Chori: After three decades of voting, I went off the voter rolls! | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-10-07T23:52:09Z

I did entertain some serious doubts about the efficacy of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of India's electoral rolls when it began in Bihar. But I surmised, naively I now realise, that it would mostly affect the mass of poor who travel long distances for work and so would be “absent” when officials visit their homes.
This was until I began following news reports of mass purges from voters' lists in state after state. The ugly truth hit home hard when my own name disappeared from (…)

- 2026

Bata: A multinational that stole Indian hearts | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-10-07T23:47:08Z

BOOK REVIEW Batanagar: A Personal History of India's Forgotten Company Town
by Paramita Sen
Pan Macmillan India Pages: xxi + 225 It goes to the credit of Bata that it merged so beautifully with Indian ethos that millions for a long time never suspected that it was a multinational from Europe.
Bata's quiet birth in India during the British rule, its steady expansion both before and after the country's independence, and its closeness to the icons of the freedom movement gave the (…)

- 2026 / Book Review

Mars Mission? Yes! More Investment in Healthcare? No! | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-08-25T03:49:50Z

When Ramani Atkuri walked into a primary health centre in a tribal pocket of Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh, there was no one in the registration centre or the consultation room. Surprisingly, the simple rural folk gathered there were not upset. A young man was, however, busy dispensing medicines at the pharmacy. Atkuri was surprised when he ran to the registration counter after a while; five registrations later, he hurried to the consultation room and took his seat. Yes, the young man was a (…)

- 2026

Daniel Ortega: A revolutionary who once held promise | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-08-25T03:47:11Z

In the hour when I saw him in the Nicaraguan capital addressing fellow Sandinistas, I did not imagine even fleetingly that he would one day trade his revolutionary credentials for a political dictatorship sans elections. For someone who won millions of hearts for boldly spearheading an armed struggle against the American-backed Anastasio Somoza, it is painful that he is now being compared to the very despot he helped overthrow in 1979.
It was an epoch-making event, in American's own (…)

- 2026

How Erdogan Turned Turkey into a Fiefdom | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-08-25T03:44:33Z

BOOK REVIEW From Life Itself Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan
by Suzy Hansen
Profile Books When you read a political biography of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you feel you are discovering modern-day dictators around the world. It is not a surprise that he once boasted: “Now there are only two experienced leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”
American journalist Suzy Hansen also puts Erdogan in the same bracket as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – men who insist on (…)

- 2026 / Book Review

Tamils seek Europe's Help as War Crime Haunts Sri Lanka | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-08-15T09:15:12Z

In a country where thousands of Tamils were killed in the war against the Tamil Tigers, the horrific rape and murder of a school student way back in 1986 is still haunting Sri Lanka. Now, it threatens to pit liberal Europe against Colombo. Krishanthi Kumaraswamy was sexually assaulted and done to death by soldiers in Jaffna at a time when Sri Lanka was waging what looked like an unwinnable war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
When her mother and brother, worried where (…)

- 2026

God's shadow over Mizoram peace | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-08-15T09:12:49Z

BOOK REVIEW
From Guerrilla Fighter to Chief Minister: A Memoir by Zoramthanga
Penguin/Eight; Pages: xvi + 443; Price: Rs 599 In an age when politicians take credit for everything they do even while spending the tax payers' money, it is heartening to see a guerrilla-turned-political leader give full marks to God for turning Mizoram from one of the most disturbed regions into India's most peaceful state.
Zoramthanga, a pioneer of the once feared Mizo National Front (MNF) who was later (…)

- 2026 / Book Review

Keeladi, Tamil Pride and India | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-07-14T18:15:14Z

Keeladi! Rarely has any archaeological find generated as much emotion as Keeladi did since the discovery, during the British Raj, of the civilizational ruins at Harappa, now in Pakistan.
Historians had always believed that large-scale urban life in India first emerged in the north, in the greater Magadha region of the Gangetic basin, from around 600 BCE. South India, by contrast, was thought to have urbanized much later, only around 300 BCE.
The discovery of Keeladi shattered all that, (…)

- 2026

Prabhakaran's militarist strategy led to doom, says revealing book | M.R. Narayan Swamy

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-07-14T18:11:10Z

The seeds for a miserable end to Velupillai Prabhakaran's Tamil Eelam dream were laid by the man himself — a long, long, long time ago.
This is the conclusion one draws after reading a brutally honest and at times painful sketch of the early years of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by one of Prabhakaran's earliest associates, Ganeshan Iyer.
The Tamil work, Porattahil Enadhu Pathivugal, was first published abroad in 2011, two years after Prabhakaran was slain. It was (…)

- 2026 / Book Review

Saudi Arabia

M R Narayan Swamy — 2026-05-12T16:32:00Z

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unravelled the Middle East;
by Kim Ghattas
Wildfire/Headline Publishing Group
Pages: xvii + 378; Price: Rs. 799
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It is mind-boggling to even know how much death, destruction and human suffering Saudi Arabia has rained on the larger Islamic world with an insular religious ideology that has torn apart even the believers.
In a seminal study of the perennially turbulent (…)

- 2026