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In this issue:

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Dec 20, Dec 27, 2025
• Metamorphosis of the Rural Job Guarantee Scheme | Arup Kumar Sen
• Census 2026 & the Delimitation Debate] | C R Annapurna
• 2025 Kerala Local Body Polls: Spectacular Show by The UDF | M R Biju, M R B Anantha Padmanabha
• The Quiet Theft: How India’s Labour Codes Legalise the Dispossession of Workers | Varna Sri Raman
• The BJP & the Boy with the Fist in the Dyke | Arun Srivastava
• Is Nitish trying to secure his chair in the new BJP-led Bihar | Faraz Ahmad
• Indian Judiciary as Development Constraint: Rhetoric vs. Reality | Nayakara Veeresha
• Delhi’s Elite Tables and the Performance of Belonging | Disha
• The Adivasi Paradigm: Towards an Embedded and Sustainable Economy | Sujit Choudhury
• Indian-American activists battle Hindutva politics | M R Narayan Swamy
• Chile just elected a far-right extremist president who venerates Pinochet, the dictator | Marc Cooper

DOCUMENTS

• NREGA Sangharsh Morcha condemns the repeal of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) | Dec 19 2025
• CPI(M) seeks withdrawal of VB-GRAMG Bill 16461
• Joint Call for Protest from Left Parties Against Changes in MGNREGA – 22 Dec 2025
• Withdraw Opening the Nuclear industry to the private sector — Statement from IDPD, 13 Dec 2025
• A critique of The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill No. 196 of 2025 | NAAM

IMAGE & SOUND

• Music: Anoushka Shankar ’We Return to Love’ (Live with Alam Khan)
• Documentary: How the British Empire turned colonialism into business

Editor’s Picks:

• Jean Dreze writes: With MGNREGA, India set an example for the world. VB-G RAM G destroys that legacy
• From MGNREGA to RAM G — how the government kills a right
• Bharat Bhushan – Why India More Unequal Than Sub-Saharan Africa
• Rajasthan: Construction of plant billed ‘Asia’s largest ethanol project’ halted in Hanumangarh after violent protests
• Relocations of Hindutva: Hindu Nationalism Under Modi 3.0
• The Vande Mataram Charade: How BJP Weaponises History While India Burns
• How ‘Dhurandhar’ is a prime example of government-embedded filmmaking
• The Great Shamsuddin Family: A Response from Women to an Unofficial Hindu Nation-State in India
• ‘One bad word is enough to be wounded for all eternity’: Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Nobel lecture
• ‘BJP’s rise in Kerala a serious matter … it is a big threat, Left should find a way to counter it’: CPI leader Binoy Viswam
• Presses fall silent after mobs torch offices of Bangladesh’s top newspapers
• The Movie I was Afraid to See
• When decolonization is hijacked
• The Fantasy of Revolution
• Chile: All the horror of Pinochet’s dictatorship fits on a mother-of-pearl button

* (Coverpage artwork: Stuff, Photo by Harsh Kapoor Dec 25, 2025)

https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16441.html

https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16441.html