Economic and Political Weekly

History

The journal was established in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and edited by Sachin Chaudhuri. It obtained its current name in 1966. It was edited by Krishna Raj for more than three decades and is among the most prestigious scholarly journals in India, having had contributions from many of the country's best known scholars.

Past authors include Amartya Sen, Manmohan Singh, Jagdish Bhagwati, Ramachandra Guha, Angus Deaton, Kaushik Basu, Romila Thapar, Jeffrey Sachs, Prannoy Roy, T.N. Srinivasan, Subramanian Swamy, Christophe Jaffrelot, Jean Drèze, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Andre Beteille, Ashok Gulati, and Nirupam Bajpai.

Political position

The journal is known for taking left-leaning positions in its editorials, which were occasionally critical of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) government in West Bengal for not being radical enough. According to The Hindu, the journal takes strong editorial stance with a "social conscience". The Caravan notes the journal's "obsession with intra-Marxist debate" and that its contributors "range from free-market liberals on one side to Naxalite sympathisers on the other". The journal was harshly critical of some of the policies of the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency, as well as of state complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in CAB Abstracts and Scopus.

Licensing

EPW has licensed its material for non-exclusive use to 3 content aggregators - Contify, Factiva and JSTOR.

Contify disseminates EPW content to LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Securities.com, Gale Cengage, AcquireMedia and NewsBank.

Factiva and JSTOR have EPW content on their databases for their registered users.

Controversy

In 2016, C. Rammanohar Reddy quit as editor in a controversial move which led to several academics expressing concern in an open letter, and at least one board member, Jean Dreze, resigning from the board. Shortly after, his successor Paranjoy Guha Thakurta also quit in 2017 after a controversial article about the Adani Group was removed from the website amidst reasons that many felt were unclear or unjustified. In its defence, the Trust posted a statement on the EPW website stating that Guha Thakurta had violated his position by responding to a legal notice sent by the Adani Group without informing the Trust. This once again led to various scholars and commentators questioning the Sameeksha Trust that runs the journal.

Eventually professor and scholar Gopal Guru was appointed as the new editor in January 2018.

References

References

1. Guha, Ramachandra. (December 2012). "Krishna Raj and the Economic and Political Weekly".
2. (6 June 2025). "EPW Editor S. Mahendra Dev Is EAC-PM Chairman".
3. (4 August 2023). "From the Editor".
4. (17 July 2023). "S Mahendra Dev appointed editor of EPW".
5. (2015-06-05). "About Us". Economic and Political Weekly.
6. [http://www.pragoti.in/node/3103 On Sachin Choudhuri - the founder of a unique magazine/journal (Sixty years ago)] ''pragoti.in''. Retrieved 16 September 2012 {{webarchive. link. (January 16, 2014)
7. [https://books.google.com/books?id=8dTBlFmIG98C&dq=economic+and+political+weekly&pg=PR9 Calcutta Diary] Ashok Mitra. Psychology Press, 1977 - Social Science - 206 pages
8. [http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/epw-readies-for-second-innings-108070401028_1.html EPW readies for second innings] ''business-standard.com''. 4 July 2008. Retrieved 15 January 2014
9. Goddard, Stephen. (1983). "A Guide to Information Sources in the Geographical Sciences". [[Rowman & Littlefield]].
10. Kohli, Atul. (1990). "Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability". [[Cambridge University Press]].
11. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100203064722/http://www.hindu.com/2010/01/31/stories/2010013160110900.htm EPW plans editions in Indian languages] ''hindu.com''. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2014
12. (17 February 2004). "Krishna Raj". The Guardian.
13. "Serials cited". [[CABI (organisation).
14. "Content overview". [[Elsevier]].
15. (15 January 2016). "A Letter to the Sameeksha Trust, from the 'EPW Community'".
16. (13 January 2016). "EPW editor Ram Reddy to step down from the prestigious journal after a decade in the chair".
17. (21 July 2017). "Former EPW Editor Ram Reddy's 2016, Letter to the Sameeksha Trust".
18. (18 July 2017). "Adani Group 'SLAPP' Pushes EPW Editor Out of His Job".
19. (18 July 2017). "Paranjoy Guha Thakurta quits as EPW editor". The Hindu.
20. (2 August 2017). "Statement issued by the Sameeksha Trust: 2 August 2017". Economic and Political Weekly.
21. (3 August 2017). "Reinventing EPW".
22. (8 August 2017). "Murdering a Great Journal, One Editor at a Time".
23. (31 July 2017). "An Open Letter to EPW's Trustees from Partha Chatterjee".
24. (5 January 2018). "Political Scientist Gopal Guru Appointed New Editor of EPW".