Table of Contents - Mainstream, Vol 63 No 13, Mar 29, 2025

In this issue:

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 29, 2025
• Mode of Production & Reproduction of Anti-Muslim Violence in India | Arup Kumar Sen
• Haryana Budget 25-26 - Debt & Regional Inequality loom large | Sher Singh Sangwan
• Consumerism reduces folk politics from a movement to an ideology | Sunita Samal
• Is Yashwant Varma the excuse to revive the NJAC? | Faraz Ahmad
• Death in Kandhamal: Failure of Public Distribution System | Radhakanta Barik
• On Reservations in Higher Education | Arup Maharatna
• A Centennial Tribute to Samaresh Basu | Jayanta Kumar Ghosal
• Why we need to regulate herbal pills | Anindita Chakrabarty
• The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict through a Third-World Feminist Lens | Rajeshwari Sharma
• Indonesia passes a controversial law allowing greater military role in government | Kate Lamb
• The European Left Needs a Security Policy for the Region | Hanna Perekhoda
• Slave Trade ‘Indelible Stain’ on Humanity’s Conscience —UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
• Need to go beyond puerile ’definitions’ of Fascism | Aditya Nigam

DOCUMENTS:

• AIKS statement regarding the repression of protesting farmers at Shambhu & Khanauri Borders
• PUCL Statement - crackdown against farmers at the Shambhu & Khanauri Borders
• Govt move to discriminate past and future pensioners - Statement by AITUC (March 28, 2025)

BOOKS:

• A tribute to a communist | Joydip Ghosal
• Review of Researching Social Media with Children | Arun Kumar Gond
• Review of Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts . . | Gond & Chandravanshi
• Review of Brunstedt, Jonathan, The Soviet Myth of World War II

IMAGE & SOUND:

• Cartoon: In defence of comedian Kamra | Nala Ponnappa
• Photo: Communist grafiti in small-town Italy 1950s | Gianni Berengo Gardin
• Video: Who is a Citizen? Varghese K George in conversation with Nirja Gopal Jayal
• Music from the Spanish Civil War: A Las Barricadas! - To the Barricades

Editor’s Picks:

• Speaker Om Birla’s Conduct Undermines Parliamentary Conventions and Opposition’s Voice
• The divisive call for ‘One Nation, One Culture’
• ‘I had only Rs 100, a water bottle’: In Surat labour colony, memories of a long walk home 5 yrs ago
• As Solar Parks, Mines, Expressways Swallow Their Land, Guidelines To Protect Millions Of India’s Poorest Tribals Abandoned
• Not even 1% of Rs 858 crore allotted to environment ministry for pollution control scheme utilised: Parliamentary panel
• Rhea cleared, TV hysteria left unpunished
• Every foreigner visiting India to be tracked under Immigration Bill 2025
• Pakistani TV dramas remain popular in India despite political tensions and cross-border acting bans
• Pro-monarchy protesters vandalise, set ablaze building in Tinkune
• Why must workers always take to the streets for unpaid wages?
• The rail-jackers of Balochistan
• Review of Democratic Work: Radical Democracy and the Future of Labour
• The Rise and Fall of Warhorses
• How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund science

Books of Note:

• Toiling for Oil: A Social History of Petroleum in Iran by Touraj Atabaki (Cambridge University Press: December 2024, Paperback ISBN: 9781108993999)
• M.N. Pokrovskii and the Origins of Soviet Historiography by James D. White (Haymarket books, 2025, Paperback ISBN: 9798888905104)

* (Cover page artwork Credits: Harsh Kapoor, industrial landscape)