Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Saluting Sobho Gianchandani: A Symbol of Pride of the Subcontinent

  17 April 2015, by Ajeet Jawed

  [(TRIBUTE
  Sobho Gianchandani, one of Pakistan’s last leaders from its first generation of Marxists, passed away in Larkana (in Pakistan’s Sindh province) four months ago on December 8, 2014. He was cremated in his native village near Larkana on December 9, 2014.
  Gianchandani was a member of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) and stayed active after it was banned in the 1950s.
  With his death an era has come to an end in the sense that the generation of Leftist politicians who (…)

• Disturbing Signals

  12 April 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Several developments in the last few days at the Centre and in the States have caused considerable controversy and concern.
  First, there was the exchange of letters between Justice Kurian Joseph of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu on the issue of the right to convene a judicial conference of all Chief Justices and Cheif Ministers during the long week-end from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
  Justice Joseph, in his letter to the CJI on March 18, mainstained (…)

• Yemen and the Nuclear Deal: Evolving Global Equations

  12 April 2015, by Uttam Sen

  The bombing of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, by the Saudi-led coalition has exposed a bag of contradictions which are growing sharper with time. The coalition is battling the Houthi rebels hostile to the Sunni and pro-Saudi President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, more importantly, the Al Qaida and Islamic State (IS). In a sense this had to happen given the Saudi strategic vulnerability to a Shia dispensation to its south. Its oilfields could be threatened next and its own Sunni population, which is (…)

• Iran Deal: Obama earns his Nobel

  12 April 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Iran nuclear agreement, which was reached in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 2, 2015, is an incredible diplomatic victory for the United States. It contains terms that are far better than anyone would have expected. Short of dismantling altogether Iran’s nuclear establishments—and albeit leaving Iran as a threshold state—the US negotiators, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have succeeded in getting Iran to agree to a complex, almost water-proof, set of limitations that aim at (…)

• Improving Police Command

  12 April 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is a travesty of justice. The court has let off all the 16 policemen, belonging to the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) of Uttar Pradesh due to lack of evidence. It was dark and it was difficult to determine who from among the policemen fired at whom, says the court. Apparently, no real hard work was done to conduct the inquiry and fix responsibility. Yet how were the 16 accused separated from the rest in the first instance? Some criteria should have been adopted to reach the verdict. (…)

• Act East through the North-East

  12 April 2015, by Jajati K Pattnaik

  The ‘Look East Policy’ changed into the ‘Act East Policy’ under the present political dispensation led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This dispensation has called for a robust and result-oriented diplomacy to attain India’s national interest in its Eastern neighbourhood. The piecemeal approach is supposedly replaced by a proactive one to steer the course with a renewed spirit to secure tangible results in geostrategic as well as geo-economic terms. Contextualised in India’s North-East, the (…)

• A Brahmin Misfit

  12 April 2015

  by Kamakshi Balasubramanian
  India is a huge country, and represents many ethnic groups. In spite of it, for the most part, someone like me is nearly always recognised as a Tamil Brahmin pretty quickly and pretty accurately.
  So what?
  The idea of a Tamil and Brahmin is an oxymoron according to a friend of mine, a rationalist and a Leftist historian, for whom the Tamils in the pure form are anything but Brahmin. Tamils are Dravidians, a people indigenous to the ancient land that is now (…)

• Judicial Activism, Right or Wrong

  12 April 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  When politicians as a community are in a state of siege in the eyes of the public, it is extremely short-sighted on the part of any government to make any move that may appear to the public as a means to cover up or to close the channels of the politician’s exposure.
  While in the public mind, corruption among politicians has become a live issue since the Bofors bribery scandal, it was during Narasimha Rao’s Prime Ministership that the enormity of corruption in public (…)

• The Last Devadasi: Does her Death brings down Curtain on a Disgraceful Temple Custom?

  12 April 2015, by A K Biswas

  Devadasi, though described as a female slave of the gods, used with reference to women dedicated to the temple, was actually a temple prostitute. Many parts of India boasted of these women who were an integral part of Hindu shrines. And she pandered to the carnal desires of the priests, besides the rich and wealthy visitors, who undertook the journey to those places under the religious pretext. These women were a source of attraction which enhanced the reputation of many temples. The (…)

• Islamic State (IS) Declines

  12 April 2015, by Harish Chandola

  It may be too early to say that the days of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (IS) appear to be numbered. It has lost quite a lot of territory and revenue and has been completely driven out of the Kurdish region and much of Iraq. From 35,000 square kilometres of territory it used to hold at its peak, it has lost about 13,000 square kilometres in Iraq and some estimate that it is now left with just about a quarter of what it controlled. Over 1000 of its fighters and 17 top commanders were (…)