Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Vidya Munsi Is No More

  26 July 2014

  Vidya Munsi breathed her last at the age of 95 in the morning of July 7 at Kolkata. She was not only a leading figure in the Indian women’s movement but also one of the country’s veteran journalists. She was indeed the first woman journalist in Kolkata.
  Born in a Gujarati family deeply influenced by Gandhism in Bombay on December 5, 1919, Vidya Kanuga was a brilliant student. She stood first among girl students and third in the general category in the Matriculation exami-nation and joined (…)

• Accolades Abroad, Darkness at Home

  20 July 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  In his first major global outing at Fortaleza, Brazil to attend the BRICS Summit, the country’s new PM Narendra Modi has been able to successfully project India’s international image while confidently establishing himself as an important player in the multilateral fora. India was given the presidency of the just set up New Development Bank of the organisation that is to be headquartered in Shanghai. This was the product of close Sino-Russian coordination during the negotiations (…)

• FDI in Defence: Some Questions

  20 July 2014, by Barun Das Gupta

  Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech has said that his government was raising the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) cap in Defence from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. (He is also the Defence Minister.) Worrying as this piece of information is, what is more worrying is that he has not indicated which specific sectors in defence production will be thrown open to FDI and Foreign Technological Participation (FTP). The people have a right to know where exactly foreign manufacturers (…)

• The Fiscal Game 2014 - 15

  20 July 2014, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  Do the slew of Budget proposals tell a coherent story with its main characters and their roles defining their relativities vis-à-vis each other and in the process unravel the overall plot and the moral of the story? With an over-advertised play, the compulsion to satisfy everyone in the audience is surely pressing but the Drama Company, the actors, the story-writers, the financiers and so on, that is, each constituency, may tend to lend their hand in the actual performance. So the remaining (…)

• A Budget for Hindu Rashtra or Secular India?

  20 July 2014

  by Arun Srivastava
  Impassioned election speeches of Narendra Modi to create a Congress-Mukt Bharat (an India Free of the Congress) was not aimed only at changing the political system and power structure of the country, it also aimed to exhort the people, the policy-makers, the bureaucrats to move away from the Nehruvian model of politics and economic practices. Modi politically succeeded in liberating the country of the Congress, but the presentation of the first Budget of the Modi (…)

• A Book-keeper’s Exercise

  20 July 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  It’s like a political rope trick, Chidambaram’s maiden Budget as the Finance Minister of the United Front Government. Everyone from V.P. Singh and Somnath Chatterjee to the captains of the corporate giants have praised it and the Finance Minister coiuld go home in peace, as he has been anointed by the media as “Thiruvallu-var’s Disciple”. Indeed a long way that the young politician has travelled from the day when he promptly quit as the Commerce Minister to avoid being (…)

• Modi’s 50 Days in Office

  20 July 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  If the first 50-odd day of rule by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is any guide, it is a Rightist Government which has taken over India. The Nehruvian ideology which tilts towards the Left has been jettisoned. Once again, free enterprise and unencumbered trade will motivate the people.
  This is a turnaround from the policies that has guided the nation so far. The public sector will shrink and the rich will expand their area of influence and operation. This is the logical consequence of a free (…)

• The Burden of Inequity

  20 July 2014, by Badri Raina

  It is a marvel of nature that worthwhile people may be found in the most unlikely places.
  Take Mr Jaitley; civilised in demeanour, a sophisticated listener, quick on the uptake and sharp in repartee, adroit deployer of the well-timed witticism, unimpressed by raucous cheerleaders even if on his own side of the aisle, and, party Whip forbid, equipped to recognise merit on the other side, however reluctantly.
  Yet, alas, the travails of office and the mauling oppression of dry-as-dust. A (…)

• Neo-converts to Moditva and Flabbergasted Left-Liberals

  20 July 2014

  The following is a sequel to the author’s article on the Left-liberals’ approach to Moditva in the post-election scenario.
  by Biswajit Roy
  In a month after Narendra Modi’s advent to the South Block with Modified BJP gaining brute majority in Parliament, India has witnessed the gruesome killing of Mohsin Sadiq Shaikh by the Hindu Rashtra Sena in Pune, HRS-VHP attacks on Muslims in the region as well as the hounding of Modi’s social media critics by the police, in addition to increasing (…)

• Sufi Message of Universal Love as Reflected in Urdu Poetry

  20 July 2014

  by Naresh Nadeem
  It was a long time back when Pope Gregory VII compelled the German king, Henry IV (1050-1106), who acceded to the throne in 1084, to walk barefoot all the way from his kingdom to Canossa in snow and stand in waiting for three days outside the Pope’s grand mansion for an interview with him. This was even though King Henry III, the father of Henry IV, had played a key role in the accession of Hildebrand to the papal seat as Gregory VII.
  This was what went in history as the (…)