Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• SC Rulings and Citizens’
 Fundamental Rights

  8 September 2013, by Barun Das Gupta

  COMMUNICATION
  Recently, the Supreme Court has given two rulings—one denying the right of a person to continue as an MP, MLA or MLC once he has been convicted in a criminal case, and the other denying the right of a person in police or judicial custody to stand for election and even to exercise his franchise in an election. The Supreme Court’s intention is very clear and laudable, namely, to decriminalise politics by preventing anyone who has a criminal conviction or a criminal case pending (…)

• A Moving Cultural, Regional,
Emotional Experience

  8 September 2013

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Taisha Abraham
  Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti; Harper Collins India; pages: 406; price: Rs 350.
  Reading Aruna Chakravarti’s Jorasanko, as a non-Bengali, was a cultural and regional experience. Along with the seven-year-old bride of Satyendranath, Genu, we too enter the spacious Tagore household amidst ululation, conch-blowing, the “clamour of pipes and kettle drums” and intoxicated by the “delicious aroma of ghee, and spices” emerging from the cooking pits. There is an (…)

• Justice for Maruti Workers

  8 September 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  There has been a growing feeling among citizens dedicated to justice and workers’ rights that the Maruti workers have been the victims of several injustices in recent years. Some reports on the working conditions which prevailed here and gave rise to unrest among workers have indicated that the working conditions were so tight and rigid as to create health hazards for the workers. The injustices faced by the non-regular, contract workers were the most acute. They received (…)

• Hope Flickers in Dismal Setting

  2 September 2013, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As the latest developments in Syria threaten to snowball into another major crisis in the Arab world with the prospects of Western (read US) intervention in the country increasing with every passing day even as Russia and China are still stoutly opposing any such move and vetoeing in the Security Council any UN sanction for such attacks, the events on the national plane too have acquired considerable prominence of late.
  The rapid economic deterioration in the country, (…)

• Damaging a Basic Institution of Democracy

  2 September 2013

  by S. Krishnan and B.P. Mathur
  Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, has recently made a statement that the CAG is ill- equipped for conducting performance audit and lacks trained personnel for doing so and further that the performance audit conducted by him was not credible as it was done by accountants not trained for the same. (The Times of India, August 13, 2013) A few days earlier P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, blamed the former CAG for the (…)

• Convicted MPs Should Quit

  2 September 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Parliament is a temple of democracy. Members are its pujaris (priests). Their purity affects the temple’s purity. If the Members defile it, the reputation of temple goes down in the eyes of the people. They begin to doubt the belief it projects. Something similar is happening in the Indian Parliament, which has lost its lustre and does not evoke the confidence it once did. All types of ills are attributed to it. The same temple, the citadel of faith, has become a laughing stock.
  Still the (…)

• US General Wants to Learn from India

  2 September 2013, by Ninan Koshy

  General Raymond T. Odierno was in an upbeat mood. He had just returned from a visit to India. He was profuse in his praise for the Indian Army. He said the US Army had to learn a lot from its Indian counterpart.
  The US Army Chief of Staff visited India at the end of July. During that visit he met with defence leaders in India including his counterpart, the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Bikram Singh. He visited the Indian Army’s Northern Command, responsible for the borders with (…)

• A Macroeconomic View of the 
National Food Security Bill

  2 September 2013, by Arun Kumar

  The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has been contentious. Economic arguments have been presented against it confusing the public. The rich farmers are worried that farm prices would fall because cheap food would find its way into the markets. Businessmen argue that the economy would further slow down with an increase in the burden on the Budget. The elite say that subsidies and inflation would rise sharply due to profligacy. Unfortunately, most of these arguments are based on a partial (…)

• Anatomy of Kishtwar

  2 September 2013, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The recent outbursts of communal violence in Kishtwar, a remote town in Jammu and Kashmir, amply bear out the pathologies of our modernity. Rekha Chowdhary’s reading of the genesis of the town (The Hindu, August 17, 2013) and other media reports make our point evident.
  Kishtwar was known for its near idyllic inter-community relations till two decades back. The town represented an exemplary situation in 1947 when conscious collective efforts were made by the elders of both the Hindu and (…)

• Legislation Ensuring Basic Right to Food

  2 September 2013

  by Suranjita Ray
  A Historic Initiative
  The National Food Security Bill (NFSB), 2013, passed after a long debate in the Lok Sabha, and after a longer wait, is indeed a historic initiative to make the state responsible to ensure food security to 67 per cent of its population. Providing the citizens legal entitlement to food is a positive intervention of the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government, which has privileged the rights-based approach that has guaranteed a series of (…)