Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• As Parties Plunder by turn, People’s Only Choice is Negative Voting. That doesn’t seem to Work

  20 September 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It has the appearance of a planned conspiracy. A party gets power, indulges in abominable corruption and misdeeds and is then thrown out by disgusted voters. But the next party that comes to power proves just as abominable, so voters throw it out, letting the earlier party come back to power. Thus voters end up as fools while all parties get a chance to plunder the country by turn.
  Indira Gandhi’s Emergency atrocities angered the people so much that they did the unthinkable: (…)

• Kilvenmani to Javkheda: An Antithesis to Ambedkar’s Nation

  20 September 2015

  by Navneet Sharma and Pradeep Nair
  “If Hindu raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and frater-nity.......” —B.R. Ambedkar
  The mighty Hindu cultural organisation’s attempt to label Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu’ reformist gets disbanded even by a faint understanding of Ambedkar. A better comprehension of Ambedkarism challenges the prognosis of Hindutva, Hindudom and the Akhand (…)

• Refugees in Europe, Rohingyas in New Delhi

  20 September 2015

  MUSINGS
  No, I can’t get over the picture of the little Syrian boy, three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, lying dead by the sea-shore. Each time I look at it, tears continue trickling and a huge sense of helplessness-cum-sorrow overtakes...The innocence of a helpless fleeing refugee child, compounded by the pain of his father and that of the thousands of fleeing refugees ...fleeing into a nowhere of sorts. No country wants to accept these refugees. European political heads and tails coming in way, (…)

• Prof K.M. Shrivastava Is No More

  20 September 2015

  Prof K.M. Shrivastava, seniormost Professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi, collapsed suddenly on August 28 night at the Nizamuddin Railway Station, New Delhi. He was 63. He had just returned to Delhi from the IIMC-Jammu and reached Nizamuddin Railway Station from the Delhi Airport to board a train for Bhopal. Prof Shrivastava was with a former student, who had come to drop him at the station, when he collapsed. Prof Shrivastava was rushed to the All India (…)

• Nationwide TU Strike, Remembering 1965 War

  5 September 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  While the newspapers—and the electronic media in particular—are full of detailed accounts of the sordid murder of Sheena Bora magnifying the role of Indira Mukerjea behind the entire episode, the news of the nationwide strike called by 10 central trade union organisations, that disrupted normal life in different parts of the country yesterday, could find space only in the inside pages of major newspapers claiming to be national dailies. This only betrays the skewed priorities of (…)

• Challenges before Rationalists

  5 September 2015, by P.B. Sawant

  The irrational thinking and doing is mostly the result of desperation and loss of balance of mind. People fall a victim to it on account of three main reasons: i) ignorance and fundamentalism which is nothing but orthodoxy combined with fan-aticism; ii) the uncontrolled passions released by the inherent enemies of Man, namely, lust, anger, greed, fear, egoism, jealousy and possessive love; and iii) insecure and uncertain conditions of life.
  Ignorance may be curbed by proper education (…)

• Decoding the Grammar of Minority Politics

  5 September 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  The following article was sent sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  It is now being belatedly published as its contents retain considerable relevance.
  After 68 years of independence any call from senior Muslim clergy to celebrate the national day with a spirit of patriotism would undou-btedly give rise to some amount of anxiety. The leading Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom, Deoband, has asked Muslims to put up the national flag on their (…)

• Inequality in the 21st Century World Order: Perspectives from Ambedkar

  5 September 2015

  by S.N. Sahu
  The accelerated pace of globalisation, at the heart of which remain neoliberal policies, has resulted in higher levels of inequalities causing frustration and dejection among vast masses of ordinary peoples across several countries.
  Proliferation of Literature on Inequality at Global Level
  Internationally acclaimed thinkers and economists have published monumental books on inequality depicting the widening gulf between the common people and a small section of the rich and (…)

• No Prospect of Normalcy

  5 September 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  My reading is that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has had a second thought on the talks with India after fixing the meeting of Chief Security Advisors of the two countries. Otherwise, he would have intervened to clear the air and said that when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ufa, Russia, they had agreed to confine their talks to tackle terrorism which was bleeding the two countries. It is possible that the Army pulled the rug out from under Nawaz Sharif’s feet. It is hard to buy this (…)

• India - Pakistan: Imperative of Amity

  5 September 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The recent incident in Islamabad, when a member of the Indian diplomatic mission, Rajesh Mittal, was brutally assaulted by Pakistani intelligence—violating the norms of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic rights and immunities—has touched off countrywide angry protests. This is nothing surprising, particularly when Indo-Pak relations continue to be fragile, and Pakistan’s help to the secessionist elements in the Kashmir Valley is undeniable.
  This provocative action (…)