Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Reformation of Labour or Reforming the Labour Laws?

  27 December 2014

  by Nisha Bharti
  In India, 93 per cent of the labour force is informal and a massive majority of this force lives in miserable conditions. Even in the urban areas, in manufacturing and services, more than 75 per cent of the labour force is informal. Typically, labour cost amounts to 10 to 25 per cent of the total cost in manufacturing. The labour laws impose certain restrictions as well as obligations on the employer in terms of hire and fire, retrenchment, and closure of an establishment, (…)

• Dhirendra Brahmachari to Rampal: Murky Babadom, Murkier Politics

  27 December 2014

  by Navneet Sharma, Harikrishnan B. and Pradeep Nair
  ‘Babas’ or saints have always fascinated the understanding and lores of common life and common (wo)man. The Indian context makes it more colourful and piqued. India and being Indian has always been perceived through the lens shrouding mystery, religion and electoral politics. Babas and politics in India have a great relationship which is symbiotic to the two and together are a pest for democracy.
  India has informally accepted the (…)

• Government Goes Ahead With GM Crop Trials: Warnings By Top Scientists and Sangh Parivar Objections Ignored

  27 December 2014

  There are many signs that the NDA Govern-ment is going ahead with the agenda of GM crops and the multinational companies which control these crops, ignoring the strong scientific evidence against GM (genetically modified) crops.
  Some senior leader within the BJP and the wider Sangh Parivar told this writer that they think the GM crops will be a disaster, but obviously the government is not listening to this viewpoint.
  Some State governments, including those ruled by the BJP, have (…)

• BJP’s Real Face and Real Agenda Unmasked

  15 December 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Replying to a debate on ‘ghar wapsi’ (homecoming) or reconversion of Muslims to Hinduism—initiated in the Lok Sabha by Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia—Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu yesterday, inadver-tently or willingly, exposed the real face of the BJP when he stoutly defended the RSS as a “great” institution to which “we are proud to belong as it is our mother organisation”. This was sufficient proof, if such evidence was at all needed, of where the BJP leaders stand on the (…)

• Putin’s Visit and India-Russia Summit

  15 December 2014, by Arun Mohanty

  This was the fifteenth annual summit between India and Russia but since this happened to be the first summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a swiftly changing global geopolitical environment, there were strategic affairs experts predicting a certain degree of uncertainty in the cooperation between the two time-tested, all-weather, special and strategic partners. The latest Indo-Russian summit after a new government came to power in Delhi and (…)

• Tribute to V.R. Krishna Iyer

  15 December 2014

  In the death of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, who entered his 100th year last month, the country as a whole has become poorer, not just the world of Indian jurisprudence.
  In one of the most incisive tributes to the departed personality, Prof Upendra Baxi, currently Emeritus Professor of the UK’s University of Warwick, observed that Justice Krishna Iyer “has done much, as a justice and a human being, to eliminate the conceptual distinction between India and Bharat”.
  Born in Kerela’s Palakkad (…)

• Indian Constitution — Some Creative Mutations Mooted / "Conflagration Nandigram": Letter to West Bengal Governor

  15 December 2014, by V R Krishna Iyer

  We offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory by reproducing two of his pieces that appeared in Mainstream—an article and an open letter—in 2007. We are also carrying two tributes from persons who knew him well.
  Indian Constitution—Some Creative Mutations Mooted
  V.K. KRISHNA IYER
  More than a semi-centennial span has passed and several amendments inscribed making our long and complicated Constitution an arcane, logomachic and even obscurantist instrument. This supreme deed is now a (…)

• An Activist Judge with Aristotle’s Mental Range, Fearless Krishna Iyer was a Game-changer

  15 December 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  If style maketh the man, opinion maketh the judge. A wise opinion memorably expressed goes directly into the conscience of society and the annals of time. Such was the opinion: “Law without politics is blind. Politics without law is deaf.” It was an aphorism that marked the personality, the commitment and the intellectualism of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. Some 700 judgments he pronounced from the Bench of the Supreme Court and all of them were studded with bold ideas boldly (…)

• End of an Epoch

  15 December 2014, by Vijay Kumar

  When Prof Julius Stone, one of the most distinguished legal scholars of last century, passed away, his disciple, himself a great contemporary jurist, Prof Upendra Baxi, in a moving tribute, wrote: “Writing is a career of death in a sense it signifies the absence of the author”. In this sense, the great writing is a gateway to immortality. From this perspective, the profoundly erudite judgments penned down by great judges are more perdurable than great advocacy of eminent counsels. The (…)

• Russia Confronts US’ Containment Strategy

  15 December 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The annual address to the Federal Assembly by the Russian President is an occasion to dilate on the state policies, but this year’s speech by Vladimir Putin on December 4 at the Kremlin’s St George Hall before a 1000-strong audience of the country’s elites was invested with special importance.
  To be sure, there is an extraordinary setting today where Russia’s national policies and strategies are at a crossroads and the country has important choices to make. The West is forcing upon Russia (…)