Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Will Mr Narendra Modi be Able to Check the Sangh Loonies? Perhaps Not

  1 March 2015, by John Dayal

  In retrospect, the Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi, would have done better, achieved a thousand times more, and helped India’s cultural integrity, unity and amity—and therefore its prosperity—by the simple visual action of putting on a Muslim prayer-cap, delicately crocheted in white cotton thread, in front of the global TV news cameras. Mr Modi need not have gone to a Jumma Masjid, or even to a meeting of Mr Modi’s favourite Muslim leaders in Gujarat, or a private function at the (…)

• Bihar: Checkmating the Upsurge of Neo-dalit Politics

  1 March 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  The Manjhi-Nitish break-up in Bihar has indeed come as a surprise as this would dent the “clean” image of Nitish Kumar, the Chanakya of Bihar, and also decimate the tenets of his renunciation of power eight months back. No doubt the relationship between the two was based on purely political compulsions. But it has much wider ramifications/implications. Undoubtedly Nitish had played the biggest gamble of his political life by choosing Manjhi as his successor but it was (…)

• India - Sri Lanka Ties: Sirisena Visit - An Appraisal

  1 March 2015, by Apratim Mukarji

  Like most of his predecessors, Sri Lanka’s new President Maithripala Sirisena chose to make his first official visit abroad to India in mid-February, thereby reinforcing the special relationship between the two South Asian neighbours.
  Though the visit was thus the latest manifes-tation of a tradition, it was also vested with several exceptional features. It came at a time when India-Sri Lankan relations had dived headlong, having raised a number of uncomfor-table questions about the (…)

• General Amit Shah’s Black Tuesday

  1 March 2015, by Kumar Ketkar

  Till February 10, most of the print media published stories with headlines declaring a neck-and-neck fight in Delhi. The elite English TV channels also echoed that line, forecasting a “photo finish” or predicting that the BJP would score between 38 and 41 of a possible 70 seats.
  Even the bookies (safe to assume these were Gujarati satta operators) said a day before results were counted that after “carefully studying” the opinion polls, they believed the BJP had “recovered immensely”. (…)

• AAP’s Fairytale Political Journey

  1 March 2015

  by Denzil Fernandes
  The Delhi Assembly election 2015 has thrown up a historic result with the AAP’s broom sweeping off the BJP and wiping out the Congress. Figuratively, the broom has become symbolic of the sweeping victory of the AAP in Delhi. For the first time ever a non-Congress and non-BJP government has been elected. The vote-share of the winning party has been the highest ever—54.3 per cent—and the winning margin 21.5 per cent. With 67 seats out of 70, the Aam Aadmi Party has won (…)

• AAP Victory Disrupts BJP Advance

  1 March 2015, by Anil Rajimwale

  The AAP victory has slowed down the BJP juggernaut not only in Delhi but all over the country. The BJP had been taking the people too much for granted. It has been riding roughshod over people’s opinion, totally ignoring sane and sober and progressive opinion, has been continuously hurting religious feelings not only of the Muslims but increasingly of the Christians, Sikhs, and even of certain sections among the Hindus in the name of authorised or ‘unauthorised’ saints and gods. It had been (…)

• Political Significance of Aam Aadmi Party (Aap) and its Performance in Delhi Poll 2015

  1 March 2015

  by M.R. Biju
  The Aam Admi Party (Common Man’s Party) was launched on November 26, 2012 and is currently the ruling party of Delhi. It came into existence following differences between the activists Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare regarding whether or not to politicise the popular India Against Corruption movement that had been demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill since 2011. Hazare preferred that the movement should remain politically unaligned while Kejriwal felt the failure of the agitation route (…)

• Parties on Trial

  1 March 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  By the time these lines reach the reader, the final picture of electoral contests and poll alliances will be clear. After six weeks of hectic parleys and secret confabulations, political parties have at last taken their positions for the most crucial electoral battle in the history of Indian democracy.
  The contours of political alignment have never been in doubt. On the one side could be seen the forces of reaction making desperate attempts to come to an (…)

• After all, it’s a Game

  1 March 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Suppose India had lost the World Cup cricket match against Pakistan at Adelaide, the reaction among its people would have been that of disappointment and remorse. But I do not think that they would have initiated scuffles with the Pakistani spectators. The Indians would not have destroyed television sets as some did in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan. Of course, there would have been a sense of humiliation, but it would not have poured on to the streets in the shape of fracas or (…)

• Ukraine: Russia Won’t Blink

  1 March 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Russian-American history is replete with instances where Washington walked away triumphalist at the end of a standoff while Moscow retired hanging its head low. Let us dip into the past for a minute. Remember the incident at Pristina airport in June 1999 when Russian forces took over the area ahead of a NATO deployment, leading to a tense stand-off and had to vacate eventually?
  Or, remember the hushed-up incident in Afghanistan when Moscow landed 12 huge Ilyushin-76 aircraft with (…)