Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On Modi Government’s First Anniversary

  31 May 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The Narendra Modi Government completed one year in office on May 26, that is, last Tuesday. How has the country fared in the last one year?—that is the biggest question in the people’s mind now. As far as the middle class is concerned, there are sharp differences of opinion on the achievements of the Modi dispensation in the year that has gone by. This is clear from The Times of India’s poll on various issues that appeared in the newspaper on May 26. On the front page the second (…)

• One Year of NDA Rule: Issue is not Activity but its Direction

  30 May 2015, by Arun Kumar

  Introduction
  The NDA Government, that is completing one year, started with tall promises during election rallies as well as in its manifesto. It is time to assess whether the government has been able to deliver on its promises in the past one year. Of course, one should not expect all the promises to be fulfilled within one year but the media blitzkrieg by the government is forcing analysts to assess the performance. In its manifesto, the BJP promised ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas’. The (…)

• Pro-Corporate Modi Government’s First Anniversary: A Year of Anti-people and Anti-working Class Rule

  30 May 2015

  by S. Sudhakar Reddy
  The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government, as it completes its first year of rule on May 26, 2015, has to its credit an unprecedented ignominious record of being anti-people, anti-working class and anti-farmer while at the same time being pro-corporate and pro-rich. Also to its credit goes a year of misrule with all attempts being made to divide the people over caste, religion and region along with sinister moves to turn back the clock of (…)

• Modi’s One Year As Prime Minister

  30 May 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  How does one prepare the report-card on the performance of one year of the NDA Government headed by Narendra Modi? There are obvious contradictions in the ideological conviction and commitments of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues and the imperatives of having to run a government which the Constitution mandates is a secular one. All the Ministers and Members of Parliament have to take oath that they will “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India”. But many (…)

• A Year to Remember

  30 May 2015, by Badri Raina

  If words were deeds,
  And catch-phrases files,
  If sophistry were argument,
  And achievement intent,
  The strong man with fifty-
  Six inch starched frontispiece
  Has indeed fulfilled every
  Bharti’s needs to heart’s content.
  How the prices of quotidian
  Eatables have been smashed,
  How bushels of wealth are stashed
  In swelling jandhan ledgers,
  Cunning marvels of zero treasures,
  How hungry pockets have been
  Stuffed with moolah from
  The Black trough of money bags (…)

• Gen Musharraf’s Outbursts

  30 May 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  I have not been able to make out why General Pervez Musharraf, who is under house arrest on charge of treason, has made a public speech on the Kargil war which I watched on a television channel. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif must be under pressure from the Army to allow Musharraf to propagate an account which is not factually correct.
  Surely, Nawaz Sharif remembers how he was removed through a coup staged by General Musharraf. Yet, the Pakistan Prime Minister sought US President Bill (…)

• Minorities under PM Modi: A Landscape scarred with Hate, Violence, Impunity

  30 May 2015, by John Dayal

  On the night of Monday, June 4, 2015, less than a fortnight of the swearing in of the new government headed by Narendra Modi, 28-year-old Information Technology manager Mohsin Mohammed Shaikh was lynched in Pune, Maharashtra. The Times of India reported on June 5 under the headline “In Pune, ‘Hindu zealots’ kill man over ‘offensive’ Facebook post, 13 arrested”. Shaikh was killed randomly after rumours spread over an objectionable post on Facebook. His killers were members of the Hindu (…)

• India without Nehru

  30 May 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The following piece, which appeared in the ‘New Delhi Skyline’ of Mainstream, was written two days after Jawaharlal Nehru’s demise on May 27, 1964. It was published on May 30, 1964.
  As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
  It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to (…)

• Nehru for Today

  30 May 2015

  May 27 this year marks Jawaharlal Nehru’s fiftyfirst death anniversary. On this occasion we remember him by reproducing the following excerpts from his speeches and writings. We are also reproducing several articles on Nehru by noted personalities as well as excerpts from a paper presented by the present editor of Mainstream at a Nehru seminar in Kolkata this year.
  Hinduism has ever prided itself on its toleration. But today it stands in need of a reminder. ‘All sects deserve reverence for (…)

• Reflections on Nehru

  30 May 2015, by Sajjad Zaheer

  I loved and respected him, worked with him and even followed him in many ways, and yet I was among his severest critics, and perhaps no one was a greater disappointment to me and to my group than Jawaharlal Nehru.
  Our two families were known to each other, from Lucknow and Allahabad, so it was not difficult for me when I came back from England in 1935, an Oxonian and a barrister-at-law, to be taken under the protective wing of Nehru. He knew, of course, that I was a red-hot Communist, but (…)