Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Union Budget 2015-16: Injustice to Dalits and Adivasis

  12 April 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  In order to reduce and remove the many-sided disadvantages and problems faced by Dalits and adivasis, sub-plans for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been introduced to ensure adequate and justice-based availability of funds for these communities.
  Summarising the basic idea and rationale for this, the Planning Commission says: “the persistence of socio-economic backwardness of the SCs and STs in spite of the development efforts had warranted a special and focused strategy, (…)

• Judging the Judges: Debating Judicial Conduct

  12 April 2015

  by Kaleeswaram Raj
  The Supreme Court Bar Association had proposed a resolution demanding “fair treatment of lawyers” by judges. The notice issued recently by the Association, which consists of members from almost all the States in the country, says that the lawyers must receive respect “irres-pective of their standing and seniority”. It also protests against the “hurried and selected manner” in which some Supreme Court Benches hear the cases. (The Hindu, March 3, 2015) The subsequent (…)

• Examinations and Professional Competence

  12 April 2015, by Sudhir Vombatkere

  Cheating in Examinations
  The recent news reports of wholesale cheating in matriculation examinations in Bihar, with pictures of accomplices dangerously climbing the walls of buildings in which examinations were being held, to hand over cheating-aids to candidates, are horrifying. The physical risk taken by the accomplices shows that the cash paid to them—by parents who are okay with cheating, and making arrangements to “help” their wards—is adequate.
  The learning capacity and academic (…)

• Will the Recent Changes in Labour Laws usher in ‘Acche Din’ for the Working Class?

  12 April 2015

  by Anamitra Roychowdhury
  The clear continuity in economic policies between the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government is discernible to any observer of the Indian economy. Finance Ministers (FM) of both the governments being deficit hawks walk the path of strict fiscal consolidation. For example, the UPA FM, P. Chidambaram, in his Interim Budget set the target of Fiscal Deficit at 4.1 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (…)

• Tribute to Tahira Mazhar Ali

  12 April 2015

  Pioneer of the Pakistani progressive women’s movement and noted Leftist leader Tahira Mazhar Ali passed away in Lahore on March 23, 2015. The editorial in The News International (March 25, 2015) observed: “Daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, landlord and Premier of pre-partition Punjab, and wife of famous Leftist journalist Mazhar Ali Khan, Tahira Mazhar Ali charted out her own path and, some would argue, surpassed the legacy of the two men.” She was among the founders of the Democratic (…)

• The Women Prisoners sang Bulleh Shah

  12 April 2015

  by Jawed Naqvi
  “BY then, I had befriended all the women from the so-called criminal cell,” Tahira Mazhar Ali smiled, her tone toggling between impishness and conspiracy. She was sharing with me one of her many unrecorded stories about the ups and downs in a long revolutionary career. It all came to a slow-motion end on March 23 after a long battle with a stroke. Her work had spanned over seven decades—hectic, chaotic, confusing, rewarding, frustrating and painfully disheartening decades, (…)

• Acquitted for Lack of Evidence

  12 April 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  For those survivors who had been witness to the May 1987 massacre at Meerut’s Hashim-pura locality—where 42 innocent Muslim men were picked up from near a mosque and shot dead in cold blood by the Uttar Pradesh PAC cops—these 28 years have been more than painful. Pain and disgust and anger compounding with last week’s news-reports that the 16 accused cops of killing of those young Muslim men have been acquitted by a Delhi court. Yes, acquitted for lack of evidence!
  Another (…)

• Tribute to Daya Varma

  12 April 2015

  Dr Daya Varma, life-long communist, scientist, activist, dreamer, pharmacologist, professor emeritus at McGill University, Montreal, passed away on March 22, 2015 in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. He was born on August 23, 1929. A former member of the undivided Communist Party of India, he was a founder of the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA) and International South Asia Forum, as well as a founding member of CERAS (Centre d’Étude et Ressources d’Asie Sud) and was on (…)

• Uzbek Presidential Poll: Islam Karimov, the Unchallenged Leader of Uzbekistan

  12 April 2015

  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  During the last over two decades since the Soviet break-up, having given up 70 years of communist ideology and adopting the Western system of political democracy and market economy, all the 15 sovereign and independent states of the former USSR have been regularly holding presidential elections. On March 30, 2015, the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan declared the result of its presidential election held on March 26, according to which Islam Karimov was declared elected (…)

• Ever More Gas

  12 April 2015, by Mukul Dube

  We are to believe that the ass is actually a horse because Modi and his people choose to call it that.
  In the months since Narendra Damodardas Modi campaigned for the general election and then became the Prime Minister, there has been a barrage of claims and statements from him and his team which a young friend describes as an enormous, unceasing release of gas. If the analogy is taken further, the object of the flatulence seems to be to so envelop us in a foul miasma as to render us (…)