The Economic and Political Weekly, published from Mumbai, is an Indian institution which enjoys a global reputation for excellence in independent scholarship and critical inquiry.

First published in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and since 1966 as the Economic and Political Weekly, EPW, as the journal is popularly known, occupies a special place in the intellectual history of independent India. For more than five decades EPW has remained a unique forum that week after week has brought together academics, researchers, policy makers, independent thinkers, members of non-governmental organisations and political activists for debates straddling economics, politics, sociology, culture, the environment and numerous other disciplines.

EPW, published by the Sameeksha Trust, a registered charitable trust, is the only social science journal of its kind in the world. Where other reputed journals publish either only comments on contemporary affairs or research papers, EPW is unique in that every week it publishes analysis of contemporary affairs side by side with academic papers in the social sciences. The only other similar publication which contains short comments and research output is Nature of the U.K., which covers the physical sciences.