Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bhopal Tragedy: Thirty Years After

  7 December 2014

  COMMENTARY
  Thirty years ago on the night of December 2-3, 1984 the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide’s fertiliser plant in Bhopal causing a disaster beyond one’s imagination. According to current estimates, some 20,000 people died while the injured numbered over five lakhs.
  The enormity of the Bhopal tragedy has been highlighted by noted environmentalists. One of them, Sunita Narain, brings into focus why Bhopal became India’s ‘living shame’. In an article (…)

• Self-inflicted Wounds Seldom Heal

  7 December 2014, by Rajindar Sachar

  I am reminded of this whenever I think of the transfer policy of High Court judges being followed by the Supreme Court. No doubt the power of transfer from one High Court to another is to be found in the Constitution. But when in 1963 some amendments were to be made, the then Law Minister in order to remove the apprehension of misuse of power assured Parliament that the transfer of the High Court judge will only be done with the judge’s prior consent.
  But in 1975 the High Court judges were (…)

• A Pretender to the Throne

  7 December 2014, by P.B. Sawant

  Ever since the day Devendra Fadnavis, at present holding the office of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, failed to establish his majority in the State Assembly according to law, he has been running the government illegally and unconstitutionally. Admittedly, his party, the BJP, is in minority in the Assembly with only 123 members (including the Speaker) in a House of 288 members.
  The Governor called him as the head of his party to form the government, because he claimed that his party can (…)

• Stocktaking before the Fifteenth Indo-Russian Summit

  7 December 2014, by Arun Mohanty

  Russian President Vladimir Putin would pay an official visit to India from December 10 to 12, 2014 to participate in the fifteenth Indo-Russian annual summit. Russia is the first country and was the only state till a few years back with which we have developed this annual summit mechanism to find out ways and means for strengthening ties and exchange opinions on a host of international and regional issues of mutual concern. Though the understanding for holding annual summits was reached with (…)

• The Curse of Caste

  7 December 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  By any yardstick, the participation of US President Barrack Obama at the Republic Day parade in January is the recognition of India’s growing stature. His phone call to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was, no doubt, an effort to make amends of sorts. But it does not hide the fact that Washington has chosen New Delhi as its partner to advance the policies and programmes it has in view in this part of the world.
  Washington is for free enterprise and leads the capitalist world. Its (…)

• Would Kashmir’s ‘overwhelming desire for change’ bring about a Change for the Better?

  7 December 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The good news is that the first round of polling in Jammu and Kashmir saw the highest turnout in the State’s electoral history. The overall percentage was 71 but in some constituencies it went up to 77 and 80. Leh in Ladakh saw a drop, but even this was extraordinary. The temperature there had dropped to 10 degrees below zero, yet the number of voters dropped only from 68.9 percent to 65.2 per cent. This election is the people’s most decisive reply to the secessionists, the (…)

• Arbitrary Budget Cuts in Social Sectors

  7 December 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  Recently several reports in leading news-papers have drawn attention to the possibility of significant but arbitrary cuts in budgetary allocations for social sectors. On November 27, The Hindu reported: “To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central Government is brutally slashing social sector allocations... The Finance Ministry is currently in the process of revising the Budget estimates for allocations for 2014-15 across heads of expenditures and Ministries. In the revised (…)

• To Hoodwink and Much More

  7 December 2014, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Lately this particular news report has hit: 53 per cent of the prison population in India is that of Muslims, Dalits and tribals. Shocking! For two reasons—for one, these three communities are the most disadvantaged and stand deprived on every possible front. And then, these high numbers of the imprisoned Muslims and Dalits and tribals do not stand proportionate with their population— the population of the Muslims and Dalits and tribals is 39 per cent in the country, whilst those (…)

• His Master’s Voices: They Are Loud

  7 December 2014, by Badri Raina

  Ah, those cocksure voices on prime time, strident and self-righteous in their condemnation of whatever be politically out of season—most of all, even the least suggestion that what is with nauseating insistence peddled as the “national interest” may at bottom comprise merely the greedy vision hugged by a minuscule Indian neo-upper class. And the cussed temerity of those who refuse to conform and say an instant “yes” to what is blared from the big-brotherly megaphone in sickening, filmy (…)

• West Bengal: Khagragarh Blast — A New Challenge for Security and Harmony

  7 December 2014, by Pramothes Mukherjee

  Burdwan Episode
  The of grenade explosion in the first floor of a rented house at Khagragarh in West Bengal’s Burdwan town on October 2, 2014, in between the Durga Puja and Iduzzuha festivals, is alarming for many obvious reasons. The two persons killed in the blast, identified as Shakil Ahmed alias Shakil Gazi and Swapan alias Sovan Mandal, are believed to have links with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh. Their widows—Gulshana Bibi alias Rajia, Shakil’s wife, and Alima Bibi alias (…)