Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Direct Assault on Democracy

  17 February 2014

  EDITORIAL
  ”My heart bleeds to see what is happening in the House. It is sad for democracy to see that such things are happening even after all appeals for calm.”
  That was PM Manmohan Singh’s reaction after four Union Ministers belonging to the Congress from Seemandhra—K.S. Rao, D. Purandeswari, K. Suryaprakash Reddy and Chiranjeevi—rushed into the well of the Lok Sabha on February 12 to stage an unprecedented protest against the proposed bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh for setting up a (…)

• FDCA’s Appeal to Restore Peace and Harmony in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli

  17 February 2014

  The following is an appeal addressed on behalf of the Forum for Democracy and Communal Amity (FDCA) to the Union Home Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, and the UP Chief Minister, Akhilesh Yadav, for restoring peace and harmony in the riot-affected districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in Uttar Pradesh. It was released to the press on January 28, 2014.
  The Forum for Democracy and Communal Amity (FDCA) was established in July 1993. The main objective of the Forum is to promote harmony and the (…)

• AAP Must Clear Policy Confusion: Running a Government is a Sober and Serious Business

  17 February 2014, by Rajindar Sachar

  It is hoped that the Delhi Law Minister has understood Article 227 of the Constitution of India providing for the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. He, along with Chief Minister Kejriwal, had an audience with the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court the other day so as to remove any impression of even indirect interference in the domain of the judiciary. It does not behove an AAP Minister to reach late by one hour and disrupt the screening of a film at a public (…)

• Other Countries do something about Racism; Our Indifference Grievously Harms India

  17 February 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The question is not whether India is racist; the question is to what extent India is racist. Biases of a racial kind have always been a feature of our public life. Sometimes they were brushed aside as clowning, like Sardarji jokes; North Indian derision for “Madrassis” was dismissed by the southerners as another instance of the northerners’ ignorance.
  Sometimes it went out of control, like the Shiv Sena’s violence against South Indians first and now against Biharis. But the (…)

• The Long-term Goal of PADS

  17 February 2014, by Mukul Dube

  A dozen or so people met on October 20, 2013 to speak of the recent violence against Muslims in Muzaffarnagar and to discuss the possibility of preventing such violence. That was the first meeting of what was named the People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism or PADS. The word “democracy” was added to “secularism” because it was thought that the forces behind religious violence in India are essentially fascist; and it follows that there can be no democracy without secularism.
  The (…)

• Communalism will be the Poll Plank

  17 February 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  The Congress is a late starter. It firmed up its campaign for the April-May parliamentary elections only two months ago. The party was complacent till it was woken up by the dismal defeats in four of the five States during the Assembly polls.
  The surveys conducted by different media hands confirm the drubbing which the Congress is all set to receive in the 2014 general elections. The predictions are that it may not even reach three-digit figures. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, (…)

• Conferring Rights on Citizens: Laws and their Implementation

  17 February 2014, by P R Dubhashi

  I. Policy Contradictions
  The UPA Government at the Centre, dominated by the Congress party, has followed during the last nine years a dual policy. On one side, a policy of marketisation, privatisation, liberali-sation and globalisation which has led to growing inqualities and dispartities between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, rapid urbanisation marked by a large number of slums and shanties with abominable conditions of living, rising consumerism and its concomitant hedonistic values (…)

• Interrogating the Anti-graft Platform

  17 February 2014, by Arun Kumar

  The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced its intention to fight against corrupt leaders from all parties in the coming general election. So, anti-corruption seems to be its main plank since it has not yet announced anything else. Its success in the recent Delhi Assembly election was largely on an anti-corruption plank. Even the promises of cheaper/free water and electricity to the electorate were based on ending corruption in the provision of these services. Beyond these and a few other (…)

• Unscrambling the Electoral Discourse

  17 February 2014, by Uttam Sen

  We, among the aam aadmi and the middle classes, have habitually seethed over the daily pinpricks that immiserate us. Yet at the defining moment we are caught in two minds. We are watching the AAP and its activist Ministers in Delhi from afar, both with alarm and reassurance. We are alarmed at the slapping around shown on television, particularly when spiced with comment that mobocracy is taking over. We are, however, reassured that barring aberrations a turnaround will rein in prices and (…)

• STR and Mode of Information, Crisis in Modern Thought, Nature of Working Class

  17 February 2014

  COMMUNICATION
  Recently, I had a chance to glimpse portions of a fascinating book by Anil Rajimwale under the title The Particle and Philosophy in Crisis: Towards a Mode of Information. I am yet to fully grasp its contents. But I was fascinated by the bold manner in which the author has tried to trace the development of the present capitalist society towards a ‘mode of information’ and the post-industrial phase, and also the crisis in philosophy.
  Being a trade unionist and working among (…)