Mainstream Weekly

Exhibitionist Religiosity and its Discontents | Manish Thakur, Nabanipa Bhattacharjee

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee — 2025-11-08T16:27:17Z

Contrary to what we may think, one

- 2025

Karpoori Thakur: A Centennial Appraisal | Manish Thakur and Nabanipa Bhattacharjee

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee — 2024-01-27T00:26:17Z

Abstract
This short essay brings out some of the key elements that made Karpoori Thakur one of the tallest socialist leaders in Bihar. It discusses some of the important contemporary implications of the politics that Thakur espoused and practised. It makes a plea for greater engagement with Karpoori Thakur's life and times in his birth centenary year for a better understanding of varying regional trajectories of the politics of social justice.
Introduction
Even as a given conjuncture (…)

- 2024

Karpoori Thakur: Social Justice and Its Limits | Manish Thakur and Nabanipa Bhattacharjee

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee — 2023-10-14T00:27:50Z

History has its own ways of revivifying past icons and their politics. Of late, Karpoori Thakur has seen such a revival in contemporary political discourse. In particular, politics in Bihar is suffused with references to his simplicity, honesty, integrity and his lifelong commitment to the welfare of the poor and the downtrodden. Parties across a wide-ranging ideological spectrum – from the real and pretentious legatees of socialist politics to the ruling JD (U)-RJD alliance and also the BJP (…)

- 2023

Academic Freedom, Institutional Autonomy and the Board of Governors | Nabanipa Bhattacharjee & Manish Thakur

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee — 2022-07-01T21:56:50Z

by Nabanipa Bhattacharjee and Manish Thakur *
Under the section “Effective Governance and Leadership for Higher Education Institutions”, the National Education Policy 2020 (hereafter NEP 2020) makes eight references to the Board(s) of Governors (hereafter BoG) of Indian higher educational institutions within a space of two paragraphs. A careful reading of this section reveals the front-staging of the BoGs as effective antidotes to the hitherto ‘heavy-handed' and bureaucratic regulation of (…)

- 2022