Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Arab Spring and Democracy: Reinventing the Debate

  2 April 2014, by Jajati K Pattnaik

  Arab Spring1 and democracy are the catch-phrases in the contemporary intellectual discourse to define the trajectory of democratic transformation in the Arab world envisaging political participation, rule of law, increasing human capabilities, and development. Moreover, the wave of mass protests and demonstrations that rocked in the Arab world was largely attributed to repressive regimes, misuse of human rights, corruption, unemployment, and failure of the economic structure to afford (…)

• The BJP’s RSS Dilemma

  2 April 2014

  by Arun Srivastava
  The mathematics of politics does not follow the rules or grammar of arithmetic. It has its own language. The six-day political churning, from February 22 to 27, which witnessed secular Dalit leaders Ramdas Athawale of the RPI, Dr Udit Raj, Chairman of the All India Confede-ration of SC/ST Organisations, and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan aligning with the BJP, was in fact a strategic move of the RSS to change the basic structure of secularism and inject a new element of (…)

• In Pakistan and at Home

  2 April 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  I was at Lahore when Pakistan defeated India in the Asia Cup cricket match. There were celebrations and firings in the air. This is understandable because a country which is one-seventh of India feels elated by vanquishing it in some field. Even otherwise, there is no love lost between the two. What surprised me was the running theme in the talks about the victory—that India has not accepted Pakistan. This is not true and politicians in Pakistan raise this slogan to frighten the voters for (…)

• A Model in Search of Substance

  2 April 2014

  by V.P. Jain
  Modi is hogging all the media limelight by trumpeting his development gospel, a remix of the NDA’s 2004 ‘India Shining’ chorus. Self-obsessed, vain and presumptuous, he has been assiduously working to create a larger than life-size image of himself. Many of his followers even fantasise him as an ‘avatar’, who has desc-ended on earth to redeem the lesser mortals of their miseries, purportedly inflicted on them by the current regime. “Mr. Ashok Singhal, chief patron of the (…)

• Memory and Modi

  2 April 2014, by Mukul Dube

  I see around me a massive failure of memory. Narendra Damodardas Modi headed the pack of which the Supreme Court of India said, in April 2004, “The modern day Neros were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning,...” (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Modi-modern-day-Nero-SC/articleshow/612448.cms)
  The man is now considered by some to be good enough to be the country’s Prime Minister. He is called a “Vikas Purush”, the many large stains (…)

• Election Scene : Advantage Modi, but...

  23 March 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As we go to press, news has come that several important personalities from other parties have been making a beeline for the BJP.
  The Congress has been worst hit by such defections, a phenomenon not unusual before any general election. However, it would be foolhardy to overlook the problems the BJP itself is facing.
  First, party veterans like Murli Manohar Joshi and Lalji Tandon had refused to vacate their seats in UP (Varanasi and Lucknow) for Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh (…)

• Varanasi Muslims see Hope in Kejriwal’s Announcement

  23 March 2014

  by Abdul Hayi Ansari
  Following the declaration of Modi as the BJP’s candidate [in the Lok Sabha elections] for Varanasi, Kejriwal’s announcement that he may contest against Modi, has given incentive to the local Muslims.
  Inquilab’s correspondent contacted some local Muslims on phone who said that the fight between Modi and Kejriwal will be tough and sensible polling by secular voters will create difficulties for the BJP candidate.
  It should be remembered that addressing a rally in (…)

• Neville Maxwell and Brooks’ Report

  23 March 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  I was the correspondent of The Times, published from London, when Neville Maxwell was its South Asia correspondent. He operated from New Delhi and we often discussed matters con-cerning India and other countries, particularly China.
  That he was anti-India would be an under-statement. His hatred towards the country was patent in his dispatches. For example, he wrote after the second general election in 1957 that it was the last poll of the country because democracy was not suited to India’s (…)

• The Godfather {par excellence}

  23 March 2014, by Uttam Sen

  TRIBUTE
  I had met the famous Sardar of “... malice towards one and all” fame under trying circumstances in Mumbai, then Bombay. It was an otherwise pleasant winter afternoon but the occasion was as fraught as any associated with one’s first job interview. The Times of India’s trainee journalism scheme in the early seventies set the bar for the profession in India. After a written test in one’s city of origin, selected candidates were invited to the “Old lady of Bori Bunder”, The Times of (…)

• Russian Spring in Crimea

  23 March 2014, by Arun Mohanty

  Till a fortnight back nobody could ever imagine that the Ukrainian crisis, triggered by the ultra-nationalists in connivance with the West through an armed coup that overthrew the legitimate President of the country and brought a government full of semi-fascists, would snowball into a Crimean crisis, the worst one after the end of the Cold War. Ultra-nationalists along with their Western masters are completely responsible for this impasse. The problem with the West is that it never got rid (…)