Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• A Week to Remember and Learn from Five Pillars of Inspiration

  3 October 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  The week from Sepember 26 to October 2 is a very special one for all those engaged in efforts to build a better India based on justice and equality. This week includes the birth anniversary of Shahid Bhagat Singh (September 28) followed by the birthdays of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri on October 2. In addition this week we also observe death anniversaries of two of the most inspiring activists of post-indepen-dent India—Shankar Guha Niyogi (September 28) and Kishan Patnaik (…)

• Preparing for that Make-over?

  3 October 2015, by Badri Raina

  The Hindu (September 23, 2015) reports that at an RSS meeting, the hitherto routine discourse about true secularism and pseudo-secularism (alleged “minority appeasement’) has come to be superseded by a bolder formulation. Noting that the stipulation about “secularism” was clandestinely inserted into the Preamble of the Constitution by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency period, as per the above report, Shri Manmohan Vaidyaji has given voice to what one always knew to be the real position of (…)

• Motilal’s Invaluable Contribution as a Social Activist

  3 October 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  Motilal, a leading social activist of Rajasthan, breathed his last on September 23. Motilal worked till his last moments for the welfare of the Sahariya tribals. Well-educated and coming from a family of well-to-do business persons, Motiji left behind all thoughts of a prosperous career to submerge himself completely in work for the welfare and rights of the Sahariya tribals in the Baran district of Rajasthan.
  This work was actually of national importance, as the attention (…)

• Park in China: Assessing Middle Power Diplomacy

  3 October 2015, by Rajaram Panda

  Introduction
  South Korea’s ties with China reached a new milestone when President Park Geun-hye attended China’s ceremony and military parade on September 3 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the country’s “victory” in the “War of Resistance Against Japan” and “Anti-Fascist War”. Besides the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the function, that raised rumours of a new kind of Sino-Russo axis emerging, President Park’s attendance and China’s neglect of North Korea gave (…)

• The Bihar Election Scenario

  3 October 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  To many observers of the Bihar election scenario, it would seem that the battle is really between two personalities—and voter appeal —of the performing Nitish Kumar and the promising-the-paradise Narendra Modi. This is underlined by the fact that the BJP has failed to name its chief ministerial candidate ahead of the polls. Pre-poll surveys indicate an over-whelming preference for Nitish as Chief Minister, with BJP’s Sushil Modi trailing far behind as a distant second. BJP’s propaganda is (…)

• Overkill will only fetch Sympathy for Dynasty; Pettiness in Politics is Counter-productive

  3 October 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  A. Surya Prakash showed how to do it, today’s culture vultures are showing how not to do it. In a well-researched analysis in 2009, Surya Prakash told us how at least 450 government programmes involving public expenditure of lakhs of crores of rupees had been named after Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, dragging in Jawaharlal Nehru, too, for good measure.
  Consider just a few of the projects he listed and we can see the enormity of what was going on. The Rajiv Gandhi (…)

• Netaji and Mystery of the Secret Files

  3 October 2015, by Mohan K. Tikku

  Now that Mamata Banerjee has served the appetiser, everybody is hungering after the big meal. The 64 Netaji files running into 12,744 pages that the West Bengal Chief Minister declassified on September 18 seem to indicate that Netaji had survived the air crash. The rest is mostly marginal details, besides a few missing phrases or sentences in the papers that only deepen the mystery without revealing much. The real story though, one assumes, rests in the files in possession of the Central (…)

• Reservations sans Development

  3 October 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Leaders of different communities had so much confidence in the fairness of the country when it won freedom that none of them wanted reservations. The Muslim leaders rejected the then Home Minister Sardar Patel’s offer of a 15 per cent quota in government jobs and educatio-nal institutions. Their argument was that reservations fostered a parochial thinking. The country had paid an enormous price in the shape of partition for the communal electorate introduced by the British.
  Law Minister (…)

• Democratic Constitution and Political Violence in Nepal: A Part and Parcel of the Transition Stage?

  3 October 2015

  by Sanjal Shastri
  Over the last few days, Nepal has taken giant steps in its journey to become a constitutional democracy. The accepting of the Constitution marks a new stage in a decade-long effort to usher in a constitutional framework. Unfortunately, this important phase has been marred by significant violence and protests. The two questions in everyone’s mind are: who is to blame and what can be done to make this transition a peaceful one?
  We need to keep in mind that Nepal’s road to (…)

• Nepal: Modi’s Dream Merchants Messed Up Policies

  3 October 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  At times one cannot but feel sorry for the Foreign Secretary. Over the years, his has become a thankless job. The incumbent official, S. Jaishankar, is being pilloried for having been lackadaisical in preventing Nepal from adopting just this sort of an unhelpful Constitution that it has chosen to adopt.
  His lapse? Apparently, the detractors and critics say Jaishankar should have visited Kathmandu to do some arm-twisting in the month of August when the country’s draft Constitution was in (…)