Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Should there be Provision for a Plebiscite?

  15 April 2016, by Kuldip Nayar

  One key debate in the Indian Constituent Assembly was on the appointment of Governors. Many argued that a State’s High Court Chief Justice could fulfil the ornamental role when required. Equally fierce was the demand that a Governor should be elected, not appointed. In a democratic polity, a head of the state should be a person who is directly returned by the people. This was the argument.
  Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru intervened to state that an elected Governor would become a parallel (…)

• Evolution of Political Corruption

  15 April 2016, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  In just about a year’s time, we shall be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence when power was transferred from the unwilling hands of the British rulers to the leaders of our freedom struggle. And it is exactly fifty years now that in the last general election under colonial rule, in 1946, the leader of the Indian National Congress toured the length and breadth of this vast land promising the public that once the power was transferred, he (…)

• Fall of a State that was once a World Model; Kerala VIPs face the Fury of a Woman Scorned

  15 April 2016, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  For the first time in history a woman of colourful reputation, backed by a jail term, has become the fulcrum of power in the State, holding the Chief Minister, several Ministers, MLAs and police bosses to ransom. To understand the enormity of this achievement, we must remember that the present Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, is the shrewdest political manipulator Kerala has ever seen. He plotted the ouster of the influential K. Karuna-karan and of the popular A.K. Antony from (…)

• Reading the Triumph of the Left in Kerala and Apprehensions for the Future / Kerala’s Local Body Elections, 2015: An Analysis

  15 April 2016

  The following two articles reached us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. There are now being published before the Kerala Assembly elections.
  Reading the Triumph of the Left in Kerala and Apprehensions for the Future
  by Suresh Jnaneswaran
  The triumph of the Left in Kerala at the local body elections comes with many charms. The campaign at the hustings was led from the front by a ninetytwo-year-old Communist revolutionary, unparalleled in (…)

• Chennai Floods and Floods of Politics

  15 April 2016

  by Velayutham Saravanan
  Last three months, Tamil Nadu politics was sailing on floods that occurred in the Chennai city. Interestingly enough, the main reason for the Chennai floods was opening-up the Chembarambakkam tank and not the heavy downpour. In other words, man-made disasters were to be held responsible for the Chennai floods rather than the torrential rain. However, such man-made factors like encroaching the path of natural water courses and water bodies resulted in floods. In (…)

• Myanmar: New Parliament, Sui Kyi and the Rohingyas

  15 April 2016

  by Aparupa Bhattacherjee
  Despite the opposition from those parliamen-tarains closer to the Establishment, the new parliament in Myanmar has passed a bill providing a new position for Suu Kyi. With the NLD majority within the parliament taking a conscious decision not to upset the existing power structure that prohibits Suu Kyi from becoming the President, the move by the National League for Democracy (NLD) is a compromise and acceptance of the reality. This really augurs well for the (…)

• China Adapts to Change in Myanmar as South Block is in Hibernation

  15 April 2016, by M K Bhadrakumar

  India should warm up to Aung San Suu Kyi. The democratically elected government in Myanmar, that took over power on March 30, has received its first foreign dignitary on official visit—Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Both in symbolism and content, this is significant. Myanmar’s perceived ‘pivot’ to the West seems an exaggeration or a contrived misperception. (SCMP)
  Equally, the alacrity with which Beijing has adjusted itself to the advent of democracy in Myanmar takes one’s breath away. (…)

• Ambedkar, the Architect of Damodar Valley Corporation

  15 April 2016, by A K Biswas

  April 14, 2015 marks Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary. The following article is being published on that occasion.
  Sometime in April 2003 a Bengali engineer of the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), posted somewhere near the Jharkhand-West Bengal border, met me at Patna with the request to address a seminar to mark the Ambedkar birth anni-versary celebrations organised by their employees’ association. I enquired from him if he could relate the leader anyway with the (…)

• I Am An Indian Too

  15 April 2016

  by Fayezah Iqbal
  I am a Muslim and an Indian too to supplement my identity description. Despite knowing the fact that the raging times of minority hatred will add to more alienation of Muslims at every single step, I have felt a strong affinity for my nation since my childhood, for my land, for this soil. Promising job prospects in a foreign country and thereafter a prospective career full of newness awaits me.... but yet these lucrative prospects never ever succeed in appeasing my senses (…)

• What were the Main Incentives for Creation of ASEAN?

  15 April 2016

  by Shubhra Bhargava
  The Association of South-East Asian Nations is an economic and political organisation with ten member-nations. The ASEAN was formed on August 8, 1967. The member-states are: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The ASEAN was set up with the objective to bring economic, political, cultural and social integration among the nation-states and to settle the differences among them peace-fully. The ASEAN is (…)