Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Ideological-political Renewal and Revamp needed for Left Revival

  21 June 2014

  by Prasenjit Bose
  Within a week of the announcement of the Lok Sabha election results in India last month, elections to the EU parliament were held (May 22-25) across 28 European countries. While gains made by the Eurosceptic Far Right parties grabbed the attention, the anti-capitalist Party of the European Left also made significant advances by winning 51 seats across EU, 16 more than in 2009. The Left has done especially well in countries like Greece and Spain where they have been (…)

• An Assessment of Girls Education under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan

  21 June 2014

  WOMEN‘S WORLD
  by Shruti Sharma
  The way to empowerment and emancipation is through education. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that education be given to all. The makers of our Constitution realised the need for universal education, but the newly independent state had to include the right to free and compulsory education in the Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV), which were not justiciable.1 From Independence onwards Commissions have been appointed time and again to (…)

• Caste reflects the genius of India: Gandhi. Beware of Gandhi: Ambedkar. Who wins?

  21 June 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Gracious words in print and speech marked Jawaharlal Nehru’s 50th death anniversary recently. Narendra Modi himself, a day after taking oath as Prime Minister, twittered his respects on the departed leader’s punya tithi. It’s good to be mindful of history, respect the past and generally be civilised. But reality floats above sentiment. And the reality is that historical interest in Jawaharlal Nehru has all but vanished while that in Mohandas Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar is (…)

• From the Pen of a Newsman with Photographic Memory

  21 June 2014

  review article
  by Bishwajit Sen
  Bhanga Pather Ranga Dhulaye (In the Crimson Dust of the Broken Road) [Memoirs] by Sukharanjan Sengupta; Punashcha, Kolkata; price: Rs 250.
  I
  The autobiography is a strange genre. A man tells less about himself than he tells about others. It is as if he is a mirror in which the contemporary times appear in a light in which it has hardly been visible till then. We should keep in mind this essential characteristic of autobiography while assessing one. (…)

• Socialism in the Indian Ocean

  21 June 2014, by Dipak Malik

  The small island of Mauritius, literally a dot in the Indian Ocean, with a checqured history of people migrating becomes an interesting spectacle of Indian as well as European social history, particularly of the 18th century, embe-dded in the deep-seated malaise in society and economy in the age of the Empire.
  Actually, the Indian labour diaspora was a two-way traffic: one internal, where the Assam tea gardens were recruiting hapless poor peasantry from the parched land and rocky heights (…)

• Modi’s Pronouncements and Ground Reality

  14 June 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Having won absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, PM Narendra Modi, while speaking on the President’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, struck a non-partisan note in both Houses, promising in the Rajya Sabha to engage the States in “cooperative federalism” and assuring to take the Opposition alongwith him in this venture, whereas in the Lower House he went out of his way to embrace all groups and communities; he also said that “focused activity” for the (…)

• The Political Economy of Change

  14 June 2014, by Uttam Sen

  When a supposition or a system of ideas is being put in place, there is no choice but to debate the exceptionable or the inscrutable through available channels. The nuanced differentiation of an evolved milieu comes to light in the public sphere. The hardboiled rule out the catalysts of change moving to a different opinion, but to the extent that any modification is a process, the possibilities for better or worse exist at the same time. For instance, if the case is for clearing away the (…)

• S 301: Keeping Alive Gunboat Diplomacy

  14 June 2014

  by Rohini Pandurangi
  The recent decision of the United States (US) to continue to keep India in the ‘priority watch list’ thereby refraining from designating it as a ‘priority foreign country’ saves India from having to do another firefighting, at least for the time being. The sudden and unexpected decision of the EU to ban imports of Alphonso mangoes and four other vegetables from India has given the Commerce Ministry enough work to do. Though the actions of the US are unilateral and (…)

• 2014 General Elections marked a Watershed in India’s Post-independence Political History

  14 June 2014, by P R Dubhashi

  For the first time a non-Congress political party, the BJP, was able to get an absolute majority on its own in Parliament. The BJP had in the past—first for 13 days, then for 13 months, and later for a full term—formed governments but those were in alliance with a multiplicity of regional parties (some 24). The present victory is unprecedented. It has given the opportunity to the BJP to form a government without depen-dence on its allies some of whom proved unreliable.
  Reflecting on the (…)

• Dissecting the Rout of the Congress

  14 June 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  This is not the first time that the Congress has been decimated, getting only 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The party met more or less a similar fate in the 1977 election held after the Emergency. Mrs Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Emergency, and her extra-constitutional son, Sanjay Gandhi, too lost in the polls. Yet the Congress retained the three southern States—Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Even the overall tally was around 150. It was, indeed, a defeat but not a rout (…)