Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Emergence of Mini Actors and Decline of the Left in Kerala

  14 July 2014

  by K. Haridas
  Kerala might have been among those States of the country where Modi and his brand of politics were discussed least favourably. As a State that has until this point of time denied even an Assembly seat, leave alone any luck with the Lok Sabha, to the BJP, it was quite natural to be so.
  A Left camp, with unprecedented dissensions among the ranks and sympathisers, was fighting it out in the most prominent of the traditional bastions of the communist movement in the country.1 (…)

• Seven Key Economic Challenges before the New Government

  14 July 2014

  by Vinay K. Srivastava
  The results of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections have come out and the BJP-led NDA has come to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi. I take this opportunity to congratulate him for this tremendous win and wish for continued success in all his future endeavours.
  The new Prime Minister inherits an economy in crisis. India’s GDP growth is the lowest in a decade, inflation is high, industrial growth has frozen and job growth has dried up. Meanwhile, infrastructure (…)

• Budget and Vulnerable Sections of Society

  14 July 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  The annual Budget of the Central Government should always reflect high levels of concerns for weaker sections and rural areas, but this year there are additional reasons why the newly elected government should be even more concerned about this. Just a few days before the Budget, new estimates of poverty have appeared confirming the well-known fact of actual poverty levels being significantly higher. In fact even the new upscale estimates are likely to be an underestimate of the existing (…)

• New Sojourn

  14 July 2014, by Amna Mirza

  India is heralded for a new sojourn. The new Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda recently tabled the Railway Budget which is said to herald a new era in the realm of transport in India. It is being pegged as shunning populism and moving forward towards consolidation and modernisation. What justifies this notion is the move to moot Foreign Direct Investment in suburban rail corridors, stations, revamping the reservation system, public-private partner-ship for rail projects, work stations in (…)

• Core Values can Hold the Centre Together

  14 July 2014, by Uttam Sen

  The quality of our expectations is being perpetually set off by contrasting categories. The definitions are relative but even in their breach (or incompleteness) contain tangible difference. Thus, for instance, industrial society, classically underpinned by the division of labour in the use of technology for mass production, is defined by one unified purpose of material betterment while the post-industrial community demonstrates greater heterogeneity in occupation and values. Agrarian (…)

• Facing Manifold Mounting Problems

  5 July 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  So the Narendra Modi-led BJP Government at the Centre has at last been forced to act against hoarding of onions and potatoes. Yesterday it brought these two vegeables under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. This move, whose purpose is to empower State governments to undertake dehoarding operations and control the prices of these commodities which are definitely shooting up, was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) Now the States will be free to impose (…)

• Budget Justice for Dalits and Adivasis

  5 July 2014

  by Bharat Dogra, Roopam Singh
  At a time when the need for inclusive development is being emphasised time and again, it is shocking to know that year after year development funds meant for the weakest sections have been diverted to entirely different areas on a massive scale.
  Difficult to believe this may be, but it is a well-documented fact that funds meant for development of Dalits and tribals have been usurped time and again for such unlikely expenses as those relating to the (…)

• Amit Shah’s Innocence Proven?

  5 July 2014

  by Rajinder Puri
  According to media reports, the decision to appoint Amit Shah as the next President of the BJP has been all but finalised. The official announcement expected in a few days is to be a mere formality. Senior BJP leaders, L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj, had expressed reservations about Shah’s appointment until the murder cases in which he is accused are satisfactorily disposed of. It may be recalled that earlier Nitin Gadkari was removed from the BJP President’s post on (…)

• Iraq is not just a Sunni-Shia Clash; it’s Fundamentalist Wahabism’s Challenge to the World

  5 July 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The dimensions of the Iraq crisis began hitting us only when Indian workers were kidnapped and Indian nurses stranded. There is also an awareness now about the possible economic disaster if oil prices go crazy. These are grave issues and we must exert every nerve tackling them. But the big danger Iraq poses is ideological. A militant religious force is on a conquering spree and India will be among its prime targets.
  Other versions of this religious force were frightening (…)

• Coming Full Circle in Iraq

  5 July 2014, by Uttam Sen

  It is one of those ironies that the Khilafat movement of 1919 that brought two subconti-nental communities together in the cause of the Ottoman Caliphate, ostensibly came to naught. The Caliphate itself was neutralised by the secular vision of Kemal Attaturk. Yet that ideo-logical separation of church and state, mostly confined to the elite, has been under fire from the West Asian fundamentalism of the past few decades as the middle class-led masses have first assailed the state, the world (…)