Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• A Status Quo Country

  1 December 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  Whenever I return to Bangladesh, I find that one institution or the other has gone under. The last time it was the parliament. This time it is the judiciary which, to quote a top lawyer, has been “decimated”.
  Yet, what is disconcerting is that a country, born out of the people’s revolt against a distant exploitative government, has become a status quo society. True, it is still living under the shadow of the Army. The Army does not interfere in the day-to-day affairs of the state. But, to (…)

• Sri Lanka: A Serious Challenge for Rajapaksa

  1 December 2014, by Apratim Mukarji

  For the first time since 2009, when Sri Lanka’s prolonged and bloody civil war ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the triumphant President Mahinda Rajapaksa has run into a substantive blockade in his quest for unbridled executive power for himself and his extended family.
  It is obvious that irrespective of the popularity of a Head of State and Government, a democratically elected political leader is expected to abide by the Constitution and laws and (…)

• Owning up Mistake of Resignation: A Reality Check by AAP

  1 December 2014

  by Sanjay Mishra
  The following article was sent quit sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. It is now being published for the benefit of our readers on the occasion of the AAP’s second anniversary
  (it was set up on November 27, 2012) as its contents remain valid to this day.
  Introduction
  After the drubbings in the 16th Lok Sabha elections, one thought that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would be wiser: that stock-taking and introspection of the causes of (…)

• Sincere Apologies for Wrong Impression

  1 December 2014, by Chaman Lal

  COMMUNICATION
  Though I am a life member of Mainstream, I miss some issues due to the postal department’s negligence and carelessness or receive back issues many weeks later. So I missed the September 27 issue and just saw it on the website. I was both happy and shocked to see the review of my book, Understanding Bhagat Singh, by Barun Das Gupta (“Useful, if Controversial, Book on Bhagat Singh, his Life and Times”, pp. 29-30). I respect Barun Das Gupta a lot. Happy as I was waiting for its (…)

• Ring Out the New

  1 December 2014, by Badri Raina

  Past a strenuous three score and ten
  The truth had better be told:
  Ring out the new, ring in the old.
  Let the so-glittering now be
  Set aside for the unlettered then,
  Let once again nothing be bought,
  And nothing whatsoever be sold.
  Let what is of greatest worth,
  All that which have we must—
  Seamless being, seamless health—
  Ooze from a homely handful of dust.
  As you read these backward thoughts,
  Call them not defeated ones;
  When forging on is a crass pursuit,
  There (…)

• Focus of National Attention

  22 November 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Several incidents of the last few days have become the focus of national attention.
  The first was the Chhattisgarh tragedy. Laproscopic tubectomy carried out for sterilisation of 83 women at a camp in Pendari village of Takhatpur block in the State’s Bilaspur district on November 8 led to the death of 11 women while 69 others were severely affected, some of them critically, In a separate incident at another sterilisation camp in Guarella in the same district on November 10 one (…)

• The Bali Battle: Lessons for the Future

  22 November 2014

  by Rohini Pandurangi
  With the resolution of the impasse over the Bali deal, jubilation is the word to describe the mood of the Indian Government. It had been three months since the Bali trade deal reached an impasse over India’s refusal to sign the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). The negotiations had reached a stalemate due to differences among the members regarding a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for the purpose of food security. India had asserted that it (…)

• Does the India-US Bilateral Agreement on Food Security Matter?

  22 November 2014, by Kavaljit Singh

  After months of stalemate, India and the US have agreed to resolve their differences over food stockholdings which would open the way for future implementation of the Trade Facili-tation Agreement (TFA) of the WTO—the biggest trade deal in its entire history.
  On November 13, 2014, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, issued a statement announcing a bilateral agreement with the US. “We are extremely happy that India and the US have successfully resolved (…)

• US shows ‘Pure Evil’ to Russia, is pays back

  22 November 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  by M.K. Bhadrakumar
  The Islamic State [IS] missed its timing by a whisker in making the announcement that it beheaded an American aid worker. The announcement should have been made a day earlier just when the G-20 summit was getting underway and Russian “aggression” in Ukraine was about to be brought to the centre-stage as per the pre-planning by Western countries led by the United States.
  The IS could easily have put President Barack Obama on the horns of a dilemma and his Australian (…)

• Clean Epitome, Loam Pattern

  22 November 2014, by Amna Mirza

  ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness.’ These towering ideas of Mahatma Gandhi have been there since a long time. The recent act of ‘Clean India’ in the form of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ by Prime Minister Modi has captured the imagination of masses towards this dictum.
  It is often pointed out that even in the past such initiatives were taken. However, this time the idea of a polity which is uncontaminated has been ushered in at the governance plank. The era of globalisation, the peculiarities (…)