Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Keyhole Diplomacy Doesn’t Suit India

  3 March 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  In an era of globalisation, it is simply not possible for any country to consciously stay out and keep looking in through a keyhole and plunge into selective engagement with the inmates inside the room.
  For a variety of reasons one needn’t get into right here, Singapore has come to be a ‘moderator’ of India’s foreign policy discourses in recent decades. India’s haphazard ‘adjustment’ with the post-Cold War era brought it close to the Singaporean world-view, especially its ‘Look East’ (…)

• Contemporaneity of the 1930s: Some Aspects of the Lives of Low-Caste Farm Labour in India

  3 March 2014, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  The Social and Economic Conditions of the Lower Agricultural Castes in the Early 20th Century (A Survey of the Kotch State, Rajputana) by Ram Pratap Gondel; New India Publications, New Delhi; August 2010; pages 176; Rs 380.
  The book that we intend to discuss is a dissertation written for the Master’s degree of the Lucknow University in Sociology and Economics in the early 1930s by Shri Ram Pratap Gondal—who is a centenarian. The task undertaken was to examine the (…)

• Nepal: A Neighbourhood Story

  3 March 2014, by Dipak Malik

  The Himalayan cultural topography, which sparks out loudly its colours in the society, politics and day-to-day life in Kathmandu valley and around, has returned to the task of drafting a republican Constitution for the second time.
  It was hardly a surprise when the term for the first Constituent Assembly ended in 2012 after four years of intermittent exercises, yet was not able to settle the ticklish issues and produce a Constitution. The first Constituent Assembly had a majority of (…)

• Debate on Workers’ Consciousness: Further Contribution

  3 March 2014, by Anil Rajimwale

  I am thankful to Paresh Chattopadhyaya (PC) to have responded to my article and to express his reactions frankly. (Mainstream, December 28, 2013) I read his ‘Communication’ very carefully, and went back to the issues of Mainstream where other articles, including mine, have appeared and read them again.
  I think it has been a fruitful debate all through. I must say, though, that I was a bit surprised by the sharpness in PC’s reaction; of course, everybody has the full right to express one’s (…)

• An Open letter to Sonia Gandhi

  3 March 2014

  This letter was written quite sometime ago, on December 24, 2013, but could not be used earlier for unavoidable reasons. However, its contents have not become irrelevant even today. Hence it is being belatedly published.
  by SHOBHA AGGARWAL
  It was a breath of fresh air reading your public statement on the issue of homosexuality in the backdrop of the recent Supreme Court judgement upholding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises homosexual acts. Ironically, this Apex (…)

• Emergence of Telangana as the 29th State

  22 February 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  With both Houses of Parliament having passed the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2014, Telangana is going to eventually become the newest—29th—State of the Indian Union. After sixty years of tenacious struggle the people of the Telangana region have, defying all odds and sacrificing countless precious lives, been able to secure for themselves a separate State. This is indeed of historic importance and the people of Telangana are justifiably feeling jubilant.
  No doubt the (…)

• A Terror-tainted Prime Minister?

  22 February 2014

  by Mustafa Khan
  The Vishwa Hindu Parishad gave a call for a strike in Gujarat on February 28, 2002. It was the chief of the VHP in Ahmedabad, Jaideep Patel, to whom Chief Minister Narendra Modi handed over the 58 bodies of burnt passengers of the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra. Again, the VHP was at the Goa conclave of the BJP to force the Prime Minister of India, A.B. Vajpayee, to abandon his determination to change the head of government in Gandhinagar a few months after the pogrom. (…)

• Don’t Shoot the Messenger

  22 February 2014, by Uttam Sen

  The event of the Aam Aadmi Party’s resignation was a political football to the degree that people and parties tried to bring it around to their own terms. The AAP’s patronage was turning out to be a double-edged sword for the underprivileged element of the common man. Fairly unexceptionally, the interim budget pampered the urban up-and-coming a bit. In electoral battle all competitors will try the balancing act in their own ways. But if the other half’s composure appeared to hang by a thread (…)

• Vote on Account: Neither Economically nor Politically What was Needed

  22 February 2014, by Arun Kumar

  A vote on account is not expected to make any major announcement of policies since it is supposed to be a temporary measure to enable the government to continue its expenditures to maintain itself and the continuing programmes. It is expected that the new government that would take over in a few months from now would present the full Budget. In a way, the government that is on its way out should not tie the hands of the government that is expected to take over by announcing policies. But (…)

• ‘You Murderer, Get Out From My Place!’

  22 February 2014, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Don’t want to post-mortem Rahul Gandhi’s interview given to a news channel; just about the crux—he came across as forthright and earnest. No, no moron! Nah, none of the flaws those hawks were trying to hound and pound him with. The only flaw was this—Rahul should have apologised for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, for hundreds were killed, with the state machinery not curbing the rioting. I was then residing in New Delhi and could see the rioting spreading. In fact, homes and business (…)