Table of Contents, Mainstream, Nov 2, 2024

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In this issue:

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Nov 2, 2024
• US Presidential Election and the Perils of Excessive Decentralisation | Vijay Kumar
• Bengal Marxists must look beyond outdated populist moves | Arun Srivastava
• Modi Finds a New Enemy | J P Gadkari
• Will Congress repeat Haryana in Maharashtra | Faraz Ahmad
• Barmer Women Workers’ Struggle Reflects Wider Woes of Rural Employment Scheme Workers | Bharat Dogra
• Bhagalpur Communal riots 35 years on | Suresh Khairnar
• 2024 Assembly Elections: Who will crack Maharashtra? | Thirunahari Seshaiah 
• From chits to chatbots: cheating in India’s education system | Naresh Singh
• India’s First Metadata case —Part 9 | Gopal Krishna
• Tribute to Kumar David: Sri Lanka’s Broadminded Marxist | Rajan Philips
• The Kazan BRICS Summit: An Analysis | P. S. Jayaramu
• Myanmar military conscription drives mass exodus | Soe Nandar Linn
• Israel’s ban on UNRWA continues a pattern of politicizing Palestinian refugee aid | Micinski & Norman

DOCUMENTS:

• Grave Concern over Second FIR against Journalist Mahesh Langa - Statements from Media bodies

BOOKS:

• A poignant docu-memoir on the Sikhs of Kashmir | Joydip Ghosal
• Sweeping Western Sanctions Fail to Cripple Putin | M R Narayan Swamy

IMAGE & SOUND:

• Photo: Villagers from the threatened Hasdeo forests march against takeover of their ancestral lands in India’s Chattisgarh State
• Audio: Spanish Civil War Refugee Children in the USSR | Karl Qualls

Editor’s Picks:

• God’s Above the Constitution: A New Era for India’s Judiciary
• If statues could talk, the tallest in the world might have offered PM Modi a lesson in secularism
• Harsh Mander: Marauding bulldozers have left a trail of shattered lives as reticent courts watched
• Protest against mosque in Uttarkashi takes violent turn, several injured, police say structure is legal
• Educational infrastructure and growth of small towns: Evidence from India
• A picture of a growing economic divide in India
• India’s Informal Sector - The Feeder Economy Within
• Sikhs living in US, UK and Canada fear surveillance by Indian agents, informants
• China, Other BRICS Members Call For Lifting Ban On Girls’ Education In Afghanistan
• How one engineer beat the ban on home computers in socialist Yugoslavia
• Risking death to smuggle alcohol past Somali bandits and Islamist fighters
• Liberation theology icon and champion of the poor Gutiérrez dies
• The Richest Man on Earth Is Trying to Buy the US Election for Trump
• Great Power Politics - Adam Tooze on Bidenomics

Books of Note:

• Ismat Chugtai - In Her Own Words: letters & interviews Translated by Tahira Naqvi (Women Unlimited, 2023, 290 pages | ISBN 978-93-85606-43-4)
• Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism (Ed) Ben Gook (27 September 2024, 366 pages
  ISBN: 978-3-8376-5685-5) https://www.transcript-publishing.com/media/pdf/77/9e/82/oa9783839456859.pdf

* (Cover page artwork credits: "’In Notitiam Ecclesiasticam Africae Tabula Geographica" Antique Map of the Northern Coast of Africa and Southern Europe, circa 1745 )