Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Planning in a Modern Economy: Is its Role Over in India?

  6 September 2014, by Arun Kumar

  The Independence Day speech of the PM announced that the Planning Commission, set up in 1950, would be closed. Given that this institution has played a central role in the way the government functioned in India, does this announcement presage a major institutional change in governance? A new body/think-tank is supposed to replace this institution. Would this proposed institution essentially do what the Planning Commission did but under a different name and rubric? One may also ask whether in (…)

• Early Days of Planning : P.C. Mahalanobis

  6 September 2014, by Ashok Mitra

  Ideology unites, bringing like-minded people under a common sky. But ideology also divides: friends, who have enjoyed one another’s company for long years during their adolescence and early youth, attending music, poetry and dance recitals together, watched together with avidity avant-garde films and had literary taste which differed only slightly from one another’s, suddenly realised from a chance happening that their political and economic points of view were sharply at variance. This is (…)

• Scrapping of Planning Commission isn’t about Economics so much as BJP’s Anti-Nehruvianism

  6 September 2014

  by Rajrishi Singhal
  when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his maiden Independence Day speech on August 15, one crisp announcement stood out amidst the torrent of usual homilies: he wanted to shut the Planning Commission down.
  The Planning Commission is a government body that formulates five-year economic plans, among other things. What Modi will replace it with is still not clear. But he was unequivocal about his decision: “We will replace the Planning Commission with a new institution (…)

• FDI in Defence: Missing the Reality

  6 September 2014

  by Vishnu Bhagwat
  The overblown hype over the increased FDI ceilings in the defence sector, touting that India would become a major arms exporter from currently being the top importer in the world, is unrealistic. The exaggerated expectations that by increasing the FDI limits from the current 26 per cent to 49 per cent for foreign original equipment manufacturers will ensure rapid transfer of technology and setting up of vast manufacturing facilities for India’s armed forces as well as for (…)

• Congress Still Cannot look beyond the Dynasty, nor BJP beyond Sectarian Politics

  6 September 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It may seem too early, but the contours of the next general election are beginning to take shape. It will be the usual politics, played the usual dismal way. Those who saw in Narendra Modi’s victory a turning-point in history may have to revise their views. The size of its triumph had surprised the BJP just as the extent of its defeat had shocked the Congress. It was a message for the winner to try and earn the trust of all, and for the loser to introspect and change its ways. (…)

• Invasion of Educational Universe by ‘Economics’: A Civilisational Casualty?

  6 September 2014, by Arup Maharatna

  Abstract
  In the late 1950s there emerged (somewhat abruptly) a constricted one-dimensional economic interpretation of the role and purpose (hence the philosophy) of education largely from the standpoint of the concepts, categories and methodology of mainstream (neo-classical) economics. This soon culminated into the foundation of a new branch of economic discourse/inquiry, namely, economics of education, which eventually weakened the pre-existing humanistic vision and liberal view of (…)

• Tribute: Balraj Puri

  6 September 2014, by Badri Raina

  As Bipan Chandra (86) was, and will remain, to the history of anti-colonialism and communalism in India, Balraj Puri (86) was, and will remain, to the history of anti-feudalism and non-discriminatory justice in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. And both, primarily, were, and will remain, untiring and undetered voices on behalf of democracy, where democracy is not understood merely as the periodic ritual of a peaceful governmental change but as an idea inseparable from the raison d‘etre of (…)

• Is Russia legally responsible in downing the Malaysian airliner?

  6 September 2014

  by Anwar Sadat
  Does the incident of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 MH-17 on July 18, 2014, flying from Amsterdam to Kualalampur, by the pro-Russian rebels operating along the Russian-Ukrainian border resulting in the death of all the 298 persons on board, including crew members, involve Russia’s international legal responsibility? The incident of unspeakable death and destruction has evoked criticism by the US President, Barrack Obama, and several European Union leaders. (…)

• Mother India beckons us All

  6 September 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  After forty years of the foundation of our independent republic, the Frankenstein has appeared again—the monster that is out to destroy democracy and plunge this nation into civil war that shall rend asunder thousands of towns and villages of this great country.
  The term communalism does not convey the gravity of the crisis that confronts us today—let it be bluntly stated that what we face today is the demon of Hindu-Muslim hatred. Over a large part of this land, (…)

• Sardar Sarovar Evictees Wait for Justice

  6 September 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  The recent decision to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam by 17 metres has been widely criticised by social organisations led by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) as well as many eminent citizens on the ground that it violates the legal rights of about 48,000 families in the submergence area of this dam to cultivable land-based rehabilitation. As several reports have pointed out, thousands of farmers, including tribal farmers, workers, fisher folk, artisans, are still (…)