Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Congress Desperately Needs: a New Social Model for Survival

  2 May 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  This article arrived late. We are still using it as its contents retain their validity.
  Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s month long “leave of absence” will expire on April 19. He would resume his duties by addressing a rally of farmers organised by the party to protest against the Land Acquisition Bill of the Narendra Modi Government. His participation at the rally has acquired much bigger dimension only for the reason that his mother, Congress President Sonia (…)

• Significant and Encouraging

  25 April 2015

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  Rahul Gandhi’s return to active politics after an extended sabbatical and Sitaram Yechury’s elevation the post of the CPI-M General Secretary have been the most significant and encouraging developments of the last few days.
  What impressed one was Rahul’s unusually com-bative role against the Narendra Modi Government both in and outside Parliament. It was a different Rahul with all the facts and figures on his finger-tips; and the speeches were marked by pun, punch and (…)

• Encounter or Sheer Murder

  25 April 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Yet another encounter has taken place in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. I have lost the count. What is distressing is that even the human rights activists are practically quiet. Hardly anyone of them goes to the State to find out what happened on the ground, as was the practice till recently.
  This indicates not only the lessening of interest but also a tacit approval of the excesses commi-tted by the security forces. The Mufti Mohammad Sayeed Government, which announced to provide an (…)

• Lenin

  25 April 2015

  Remembering Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on his one hundred and fortyfifth birth anniversary on April 22, 2015, we are reproducing excerpts from the following article by Jawaharlal Nehru that appeared in The Hindu (April 5, 1928).
  by Jawaharlal Nehru
  ‘I know a pair of eyes which have been for ever numbed by the burning sorrow of the Terror,’ said Gorky of Lenin. This sorrow did not leave him to the end. It made him a fierce fanatic and gave him the strength of will to persevere and achieve. But (…)

• On Babasaheb Ambedkar

  25 April 2015

  by S.N. Sahu
  In the annals of India’s modern history spanning our freedom struggle two towering personalities—Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr B.R. Ambedkar—rose on their own and that too not under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr Ambedkar was one of the worst victims of untouchability. He was deliberately humiliated and excluded just because he was born as a Mahar, one of the lowest category of castes in the Dalit community in Maharashtra. After he came from Columbia University and (…)

• Jammu and Kashmir: Return of the Natives

  25 April 2015, by Badri Raina

  First a non-sequitor: the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley is fraught with great perplexities of emotion, organisation, and healthy sustainability. This contemplated return will not but be attended with consequences of historic import both for the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the subcontinent, one way or another. Of that there should be no doubt. Reason why the premises on which the project is undertaken need to be as comprehensively and objectively understood and acknowledged as (…)

• Bihar: Nitish’s Search for Strategy to Uplift Women ahead of Elections

  25 April 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  Nitish Kumar has always endeared to promote women and their cause. It was in keeping with his political vision that on Bihar Diwas (March 22), while dedicating the day to the women of Bihar, he also came out with the policy-announcement that women would be the fulcrum of the future growth and economic development of the State. As if this was not enough, he also unveiled a Women Empower-ment Policy. This move of Nitish ought to be seen in the wider strategic perspective. (…)

• No Countering the Poison of Garbage Utterances

  25 April 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  It is getting more than disgusting to hear those horrifying outbursts of the Hindutva elements directly or indirectly linked to the present-day government. These elements ought to be banned or thrown in those hell-holes. But here creeps in another of those horrifying realities—they are part and parcel of the entire set-up, so are left not just untouched but well-protected under layers of political patronage.
  How could the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut get away with this totally (…)

• Appropriating the Modus Operandi

  25 April 2015

  by Saurabh Bajpai
  To destroy the legacy of the Indian national movement, the RSS-BJP has appropriated its modus operandi. It sounds harsh but true; the RSS-BJP is imitating the methods adopted by the anti-imperialist struggle led by the Congress. The question arises: how can it be? How can a secret-fascist organisation imitate the world’s largest democratic movement? The RSS-Muslim League-led communal politics was an anti-thesis of the nationalist mobilisation in India. Ideologically they (…)

• Union Budget 2015-16 : A Beautiful Carriage with Lame Horses

  25 April 2015, by Kobad Ghandy

  The following analysis of the union budget by the marxist/maoist thinker, kobad ghandy, was written this month and reached us last week for publication in this journal. He sent it from tihar jail where he is once again lodged in jail no. 3 (where he had stayed earlier before being transferred to jail no. 2, ward 5). It is now being published here for the benefit of our readers.
  However grand a carriage, without robust horses it is useless—it cannot move even an inch forward. So also it is (…)