Mainstream Weekly

Early Days of Planning : P.C. Mahalanobis

Ashok Mitra — 2014-09-06T09:57:08Z

Ideology unites, bringing like-minded people under a common sky. But ideology also divides: friends, who have enjoyed one another's company for long years during their adolescence and early youth, attending music, poetry and dance recitals together, watched together with avidity avant-garde films and had literary taste which differed only slightly from one another's, suddenly realised from a chance happening that their political and economic points of view were sharply at variance. This is (…)

- 2014

Comrade EMS - A Homage

Ashok Mitra — 2009-06-22T17:07:52Z

Tributes to E.M.S. Namboodripad
Scholar extraordinary, Comrade EMS would hold his own in intense discussions on ideological, methodological and epistemological issues with close comrades as much as with foremost economists, historians and other social scientists. He would write tracts on both Marxist theory and on emerging aspects of what he described as the National Question. He would, simultaneously, compose documents, in English as well as Malayalam, on contemporary political issues, (…)

- June 2009

Why Fool Yourselves?

Ashok Mitra — 2009-06-02T08:28:40Z

In a country where three-quarters of the population are poor by any criterion, and at least one-quarter live below the level of subsistence, the Left cannot but be acutely relevant. What is perhaps of equal relevance is an adequate parliamentary presence on their behalf; otherwise the victims of persistent deprivation may seek advice and counsel from such armed bands as are roaming the forests of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The extremely poor performance of the Left in the Lok Sabha (…)

- May 2009