Mainstream Weekly

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• Bus they Missed

  22 February 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  Fifteen years ago in February 1999, Atal Behari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister, took a bus to Lahore to normalise relations with Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif was Pakistan’s Prime Minister. They jointly issued the Lahore Declaration which adumbrated several steps to overcome the differences that had yawned the distance between the two countries.
  I was one of those who rode the bus. It was an exhilarating experience, pregnant with optimism. At least, I felt that the journey of a few kilometres (…)

• Will the Voice of Sanity and Reason Wake Up to Take the Call against Human Bondage?

  22 February 2014, by Lakshmidhar Mishra

  The abominable bonded labour system resting on the premise of unequal exchange is anathema to a civilised human conscience. It is a negation of inalienable human rights premised on respect for human dignity, decency, equality and freedom. It is a slur on the march of civilisation to the so-called material progress. It is the very antithesis of decent productive work.
  The million dollar question is: how do we identify the victims of the system? Being in the twilight zone of human (…)

• Chasing the Holy Grail of Peace in South Asia

  22 February 2014

  by Saumitra Mohan
  The world seems to be slowly becoming enveloped in the pall of gloom and doom. The confirmation of the same is all around us if just take a look around us. Against the background of the globe reeling under the massive problem of recession and stagflation, the global peace index has also been worsening. And the situation is no different for the countries of South Asia.
  If the behemoth India seems to be grappling with a negative economic scenario along with the problems (…)

• Development Path of India — Some Major Policy Issues

  22 February 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  In the recent past India’s economic growth rate went up significantly for some years but the people continued to experience serious problems of meeting their basic needs and environmental problems went on rising at a fast pace. Economic inequalities grew sharply and the struggle for survival for those at the bottom remained a grim one. Small farmers, several categories of artisans, self-employed people and workers faced increasingly difficult conditions in protecting their livelihoods. In (…)

• Kalpana Dutt

  22 February 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Distinguished revolutionary Kalpana Dutt’s nineteenth death anniversary fell on February 8 this year. It came and went without hardly anyone remembering her on the occasion. Kalpana’s birth centenary on July 27, 2013 also went virtually unnoticed. But we in Mainstream decided to offer our homage to her memory by reproducing the following piece that N.C. wrote precisely nineteen years ago following Kalpana’s demise.
  On February 8 passed away in a Calcutta hospital a (…)

• Requiem for Nido

  22 February 2014, by A K Biswas

  Seventeen-year-old Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal, recently fell victim to hate crime in Delhi. The signifies what is fundamentally rotten in the public life of India as a nation. India’s feeble posturing for inclusive policy has remained starkly insufficient to make a dent on its exclusive society. The implications and ramifications of the tragdey befalling the teenager are far more frightening than meet the eye. The so-called mainland in general and the over-hyped Aryavart as the (…)

• Who is an Indian?

  22 February 2014

  by Biswajit Roy
  Nido Tania reminds me of Bir Nilmani Singh
  I did not know Nido, the teenaged student from Arunachal Pradesh in Delhi who died following a racist, parochial attack by some locals, presumably, north Indian men. He paid the price for protesting their taunts about his ‘mongoloid’ look and punk hairstyle. I met Singh, a Meitei elder from Manipur who had joined the Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose in his youth. Both are from the country’s North-East region, one of (…)

• An Open Letter to Medha Patkar

  22 February 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  Respected Medhaji,
  Greetings. I’ve learnt from newspaper reports that you’re contesting the Lok Sabha election as a candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
  While certainly there are some positive aspects of the AAP and I’ve myself noticed the dedication of some of its activists, at the same time there are several questionable aspects of the AAP’s quick rise to fame and success. Leaving these aside for the time being, I’d like to draw your attention only to what Shri Arvind Kejriwal said (…)

• AAP

  22 February 2014, by Badri Raina

  O enfant terrible, What a spanner you have thrown Into the habibual settled ways Of proprietors who can Be heard to groan at the insouciance With which you relentlessly amaze. O picaroon of politics, there seems No end to the tricks you invent To get under the skin of the establishment. Yet, with a billion lives at stake, can You blame those who wonder whether One swallow may that summer make That fills the plain with uplifting heather. Is it a danger that you may be Too full of (…)

• Parvathi Krishnan Is No More

  22 February 2014

  As we go to press, news has come that veteran CPI leader Parvathi Krishnan, who played a leading role in mobilising working women under the banner of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), has passed away. She died in a hospital in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu)—where she and husband, former CPI Secretary N.K. Krishnan, stayed and worked among the local working class—in the early hours of Thursday (February 20, 2014). She would have turned 95 on March 15. She is survived by her daughter, (…)