Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• CPM Plenum

  30 January 2016, by Amitava Mukherjee

  Initially the CPM Plenum in Kolkata had raised some expectations and a section of the media had even described it as the one which would provide the much needed guidance to the Left politics of the country. In the end, however, the Plenum turned out to be a damp squib and an exercise in nothingness. Instead of providing the beacon-light, the Plenum has shown all the potentialities of pulling the Left to a muddy swirl. But this was expected as the Indian Left is yet to get over its (…)

• CPI-M: Kolkata Plenum and the Ideological and Political Contradictions

  30 January 2016

  by Arun Srivastava
  Addressing the valedictory session of the CPI-M’s Kolkata Plenum, party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury reiterated that the Left could offer India a “policy alternative, a better political culture which fights corruption, moral degradation and degeneration which is rampant in Indian politics today”. He, however, refrained from enumerating what India and its people actually desperately need from the Indian Marxists and Left forces.
  He reiterated the three-decade-old (…)

• Reflections on Decentralised Health Delivery System in Kerala

  30 January 2016

  by Jos Chathukulam
  The much acclaimed Kerala model of health care system (Elamon, Franke and Ekbal, 2004) had faced serious challenges in the mid-1980s and early 1990s due to the dilution of the politics of collective action and deficit in delivery of public goods in general and health care in particular by the State Government. Further the stagnation in the economy of Kerala, witnessed during the period, contributed to the decline of the quality of service delivery in the health sector. (…)

• Behind the Kaliachak Violence

  30 January 2016, by Barun Das Gupta

  Large-scale violence broke out at Kaliachak, a small town in Malda district of West Bengal, about twenty kms south-west of Malda town, on January 3. Several thousand Muslims (Malda is a Muslim-majority district) had gathered to protest against an objectionable remark against Prophet Muhammad allegedly made by one Kamlesh Tiwari, the working president of the Hindu Mahasabha in Uttar Pradesh. (Reportedly, Tiwari said Muhammad was the first homosexual in the world. The communally provocative (…)

• Malda Violence: Secularists are Not Silent, it is just that Some have turned Deaf

  30 January 2016

  by Ram Puniyani
  The violence in Malda poses the basic question: was it a case of communal violence or was it just a criminal act, anti-social violence as some are claiming?
  On January 3, a large Muslim crowd mobilised to protest against the statement against Prophet Mohammad by Kamlesh Tripathi, a Hindu Mahasabha worker, later disowned by the party. His statement was in turn a reaction to the derogatory statement against the RSS by the Uttar Pradesh Minister, Azam Khan.
  The size of the (…)

• The Lone Wolf Phenomenon

  30 January 2016, by Mohan K. Tikku

  A couple of years ago, the annual State of the Future report of the Millennium Project in Washington had sounded an early warning on the Lone Wolf phenomenon that has gone largely unheeded across the world. Now that the animal is getting closer to the door, it may be time to be warned on how to deal with it. In the annals of international terror, the Lone Wolf pheno-menon is about the terrorist who acts indivi-dually without evincing affiliations to any terrorist group or network. And yet, (…)

• What makes the ISIS more dangerous than Al-Qaeda?

  30 January 2016, by Sandeep Shastri

  In his final State of the Union address, Barak Obama mentioned that the ISIS does not pose a threat to the US. This comes at a time when we have witnessed two back-to-back attacks, one in Istanbul and another one in Jakarta. Over the past six months we have seen a string of ISIS-led attacks in Paris and Beirut—all proving the serious threat the group poses. Looking at what has transpired over the last six months, Obama’s statement cannot be farther from the truth.
  A closer study of the (…)

• Looking Beyond the Pathankot Attack

  30 January 2016, by S G Vombatkere

  The Pathankot IAF base is near the border with Pakistan. A Pakistani terrorist squad entered the Air Force base in the wee hours of 2016 New Year’s Day by crossing the security wall, and hid in sarkanda grass before launching an attack on personnel within the base early on January 2.
  The debate in the media appears focused on several issues including the fact that there were intelligence inputs which were not acted upon, the casualties caused by the terrorists, the reason why the emergency (…)

• Tribute: Dr B.D. Sharma

  30 January 2016

  by Kadayam Subramanian
  My dear friend and hero, Dr B.D. Sharma, who passed away recently, was an eminent civil servant of the IAS cadre in Madhya Pradesh (MP). The State produced many an eminent and progressive civil servant and police officer.
  I came to know about Dr B.D. Sharma only after I joined the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 1979 and took up my job as the Director of the newly created Civil Rights Cell (CRC), an innovation by the then Janata Party Government in New (…)

• In Memory of Dr B.D. Sharma

  30 January 2016

  COMMUNICATION
  Dr B.D. Sharma, who passed away on December 6 at Gwalior, will be remembered for his many-sided talents, scholarship and activism, but his most lasting contribution will be for his efforts for ensuring justice to tribals in India.
  Dr Sharma, an IAS officer, worked in very senior positions in the Home Ministry and then as the Vice-Chancellor of the North-East Hill University. His work as the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Tribes was distinguished by activist-like (…)