Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• West Bengal : A Case of Costly Arrogance

  25 April 2016, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  As the State Assembly elections in West Bengal are in full swing, the arrogance of the ruling Trinamul Congress has come out in the open in different forms. We are thus reproducing the following write-up of N.C. higlighting the arrogance of the erstwhile West Bengal Government led by the CPM that eventually led to its debacle at the hustings five years ago. This is just to underscore that the electorate has never and will never tolerate such expressions of arrogance of (…)

• Charusita Chakravarty: A Scientist and Multifaceted Scholar

  25 April 2016, by S.K. Pande

  TRIBUTE
  On March 29, 2016, Professor Charusita Chakravarty, one of the leading women scientists of India, was no more. She was not even 52 when she died in Delhi. Her life was snatched after her brave fight against cancer for around four years, taking classes, when she could, braving pain with a smile and finally succumbing after so many determined recoveries. She leaves behind an academic husband, Professor Ram Ramaswamy, a young bright daughter Krithi and a dazed mother Lalita (…)

• Svetlana Alexievich: A Warrior for Peace

  25 April 2016, by Sagari Chhabra

  I must confess that I first heard of Svetlana Alexievich when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. A woman journalist winning a Nobel Prize is in itself newsworthy, but who is this woman and what kind of books does she write?—I wondered. Alexievich is certainly an unfamiliar name to English-speaking readers, so probing into her background revealed that she is a journalist and author who was born on May 31, 1948 in the Ukranian town of Ivano-Frankovsk. Her Belarussian father was an (…)

• Our Elections often field the Worst of Leaders—Kerala does it again for Chandy’s People

  25 April 2016, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Trust Kerala to make the impossible possible. It is a holy tenet of the Congress Party’s culture that the High Command be implicitly obeyed; no one ever dreams of going against its wishes. Kerala’s Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has not only broken the sacred code, he has actually bullied the High Command into accepting his wishes. Two Ministers in particular had become steeped in corruption and Rahul Gandhi wanted to keep them out of this election. Chandy threatened that if the (…)

• Leveraging on Societal Insecurities and Politics of Crises in India

  25 April 2016

  by Santosh K. Patra and Sumana Khan
  The definition of “Democracy” in India today is obfuscating. The kind of political scenario that India has been housing, especially since the last two-three decades, is forcing the public to make myriads of conjectures about the politics of India. Be it the post-liberalisation phase beginning 1991 or 2011-2012 when the then ruling party of the republic was seen battling with internal crisis and issues of varied forms of corruptions or the subsequent (…)

• CJI bats for the Downtrodden: A ray of hope beyond the dark tunnel

  25 April 2016

  by M.M. Khajooria
  The inaugural address of Justice T.S. Thakur to the two-day legal seminar in Jammu the other day came as a whiff of fresh air in the suffocating, stifling and polluted environment that has engulfed the country. That the concern for the denial of rights and institutionalised exploitation of the disadvantaged sections of the society and a strong push for restoration of their dignity and the solution of their problems should come from the head of an institution commonly (…)

• Sheikh Peer of the Twentythird

  25 April 2016, by Badri Raina

  (On the occasion of William Shakespeare’s birth and death on April 23) You died the day you were born. And immortalised The day you died. Four hundred years after We come to you for Knowledge of our world Which you saw coming As your sentience unfurled. Used to the full, you Remain inexhaustible. Your incomparable words shame Our cocksure certainties; In infinity of percipience you Enact the storm and the breeze. May, O Peer, in our wilderness, The thirst for you increase.
  April (…)

• Thoughts on World Earth Day

  25 April 2016, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  The predominant thought that comes to mind as the World Earth Day (April 22) approaches is regarding the alarming extent to which some of the most pressing problems which can damage seriously the life-creating conditions on earth are being ignored. Highly diverse life-forms have flourished to an amazing extent on our beautiful planet but tragically in recent decades the conditions for the survival of many of these life forms as well as their habitats have deteriorated (…)

• Assam Polls, Kollam Tragedy, India-US

  15 April 2016

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The polling and campaign for the State Assembly elections are in full swing. Even though the States where elections are being held do not have any strong presence of the ruling party at the Centre, the BJP is making a desperate bid to wrest power in Assam, the key North-East State in the poll-fray.
  However, the latest news from Assam is not that hopeful from the BJP’s standpoint. Its full-throated campaign for communal polarisation alongwith calls to seal the (…)

• Men, Women and the Nation: Semiotics of Hindu Nationalism

  15 April 2016

  by Navneet Sharma and Pradeep Nair
  Trident (Trishul)is a symbol of Hindu religion and not a weapon.... its distribution is a movement to realise our goal of [the] Hindu Rashtra. —A Hindu fanatic leader
  The mobilisation of people on communal lines has been the oldest trick in the politics of the world and nations. In Hindu mythology ‘trishul’ is wielded by Shiva and Durga. Trishul is a polyvalent (trifold or having multiple usage) symbol. The trishul wielder symbolises a virulent and (…)