Mainstream Weekly

Eleven Years, Six Asks: The Policy Ledger Behind Modi's Austerity Appeal | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2026-05-22T04:36:00Z

Seventy-three days into the Iran war, the Prime Minister asked Indians to cut fuel, defer foreign travel, postpone gold, reduce edible oil, revive work-from-home, and buy Indian. Citizens of any country with an import profile like India's would accept restraint in a crisis. The question is why this crisis arrived so unprepared for, after eleven years of Make in India, Atmanirbhar Bharat, and Aatmanirbharta. Each ask names a vulnerability the policy ledger was supposed to close. The bill is (…)

- 2026

The Unaccountable State | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2026-04-10T00:40:31Z

Fifty years of amendments, one direction of travel: how the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act became the instrument through which the Indian state removes the organisations that hold it to account.
I have spent more than twenty years in and around civil society organisations. My first fieldwork was in a cramped NGO office in a district town, the kind of place that ran on a combination of Ford Foundation money, two overworked programme officers, and a conviction that someone had to do (…)

- 2026

The Price of Someone Else

Varna Sri Raman — 2026-03-31T02:58:10Z

$12 billion in two weeks. Oil above $108. The Strait of Hormuz shut. 3.2 million Iranians are displaced. In Delhi, families are paying Rs 3,000 for a black-market LPG cylinder. This war is now a month old.
The joint US-Israeli war on Iran, four weeks old now, has produced what the IEA calls the largest oil supply disruption in history, sent Brent crude above $108, shut the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, displaced 3.2 million Iranians, and triggered an LPG crisis across India. (…)

- 2026

India's AI Deficit The World's Largest Engineering Pipeline Produces Workers, Not Innovators | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2026-02-15T09:33:48Z

Why the US invested 94 times more in AI than India last year, why 62% of India's top engineering talent emigrates, why every semiconductor fab proposal keeps collapsing, and what this means for an IT sector already shedding tens of thousands of jobs to the very technology India cannot build.
IN DECEMBER 2025, India's IT Minister proudly tweeted that India had

- 2026

The Law That Eats Due Process: How UAPA Became India's Preferred Tool for Preventive Detention | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2026-01-10T02:11:32Z

7 Jan, 2026
A 3.2% conviction rate, years of pre-trial imprisonment, and a legal architecture designed to deny bail

- 2026

The Quiet Theft: How India's Labour Codes Legalise the Dispossession of Workers | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2025-12-21T05:47:18Z

The codes are designed to leave labour unprotected in the face of capital's onslaught.

- 2025

Bihar's Two Democracies : Where Women Fought Back & Where Hate Politics Won | Varna Sri Raman

Varna Sri Raman — 2025-11-22T17:00:06Z

In Seemanchal, record women's turnout resisted voter suppression. In Bhojpur, none of that mattered

- 2025