Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Ill-timed and Ill-advised Move

  8 August 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The logjam in Parliament continues. What is more, the threat of the entire monsoon session being washed out due to the inability of the ruling party at the Centre to meet the legitimate demands of the principal Opposition party with regard to both the Lalitgate and Vyapam scams has become quite potent in the wake of the unfolding developments in the Lok Sabha in particular.
  One has to quite sharply underscore one point: the Lok Sabha Speaker’s latest action of suspending 25 (…)

• Welcome to our own Tea Party

  8 August 2015, by Badri Raina

  Finally, it is here—our own Tea Party.
  It had to happen, of course, given the drift of political/ideological predilections over the last year.
  One of India’s high constitutional authorities has admonished the state to keep “tabs” on all those who attended the funeral of the executed Yakub Memon (barring his family and friends, thankfully, although one would have argued that they indeed would have the most cause to do something untoward, no?) as “potential terrorists”.
  Now, (…)

• Resentful Kashmiris

  8 August 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Kashmir has changed beyond recognition. In less than five years when I visited Srinagar last, the Valley has become visibly anti-India. This does not mean that it has become pro-Pakistan, although some green flags fly in the interiors of Srinagar. What it really means is that the alienation, which was perceptible even earlier, has changed into resentment.
  However, the sunny sides like the Dal Lake and its bundh (bank) are as normal as they used to be. Tourists drive straight from the (…)

• Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, 2014: U-turn by the BJP

  8 August 2015

  by M.R. Biju
  The power to take property from the indivi-dual is rooted in the idea of eminent domain. The doctrine of eminent domain states that the sovereign can do anything if the act of the sovereign involves public interest. The doctrine empowers the sovereign to acquire private land for public use, provided the public nature of the usage can be demonstrated beyond doubt. The doctrine is based on the following two Latin maxims: (1) Salus populi suprema lex (Welfare of the People Is the (…)

• PDP-BJP Coalition Government in J&K — 100 Days of Controversies and Policy Paralysis

  8 August 2015

  by Aijaz Ashraf Wani and Farooq Ahmad Waza
  This article reached us quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  While hundred days is surely too brief a period to judge any government, it does, however, provide an insight into the willingness and capabilities of a government as well as the direction that it is taking. And when the government is a coalition and that too made up of parties like the BJP and PDP with diametrically opposite ideoglogies and (…)

• Communists and ‘Quit India’ Struggle

  8 August 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  We reproduce N.C.’s following article on the 73rd anniversary of the ‘Quit India’ struggle.
  This was the week, fiftytwo years ago, that marked the parting of ways between the Communists and the Congress. It was the Communist opposition to the ‘Quit India’ resolution at the historic AICC session in August 1942 that ultimately led to the expulsion of the Communists from the Congress organisations in 1946. Incidentally, the eviction of the Communists from the Congress (…)

• Coming Out of the Closet: Making Sense of the Meeting of RSS and Jamaat-e-Islami Leaders in Varanasi

  8 August 2015

  by Fahad Hashmi
  ‘The masses have never thirsted after truth...Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.’ —Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd
  In what might be called a classic case of political naivety, the Student Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami of India, recently organised an international seminar on ‘communal harmony’ and ‘nation-building’ in collaboration with (…)

• On Education Policy

  8 August 2015

  The people of Goa can be justifiably proud of the progress achieved over the last five decades in core sectors such as education. The literacy rate in Goa was about 30 per centat the time of liberation. It is now hundred per centif we exclude some persons above the age of 50 years. In 1961, in my own village there was just one primary school with about hundred students. The village has now been subdivided into three panchayats and has several primary schools and high schools with thousands (…)

• On Wage Settlement of Bank Employees

  8 August 2015

  by Basudev Ganguly
  Ultimately the bipartite talks between the IBA and bank unions are over and the tenth bipartite settlement has been arrived at. Many questions and issues have cropped up in the meantime.
  a) Are the bipartite settlements being carried forward with the purpose of achieving signifi-cant achievements towards improving service conditions, enhancing wages and super-annuation benefits?
  b) It is the unions’ mental bankruptcy to accept a new vertical of 7.75 per cent as (…)

• Underprivileged Achievers in the Jungle of Predators

  8 August 2015, by A K Biswas

  The sparkling success of two underprivileged brothers, Raju and Brijesh Saroj, of village Rehua Lalganj, district Pratapgarh of Uttar Pradesh in the highly competitive IIT entrance test have earned loud appreciations from home and abroad. Raju secured the 167th and Brijesh the 410th rank in the merit list. Dharamraj, a mill-hand in Surat, Gujarat, earns a monthly sum of Rs 12,000 for a family of seven persons. Knowing their father’s inability to finance their expensive engineering education (…)