Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Think Big and Act Boldly

  18 August 2013

  by N.V.K. Murthy
  The country will soon be celebrating the 66th anniversary of its freedom. Much has happened since India became independent. Great strides have been made in the realm of industrialisation of the country. India has leap-frogged into the 21st century in certain areas like information technology. But let us accept that much more has to be achieved. Poverty, unemployment, sickness, droughts and floods stalk the country.
  When the founding fathers framed a Constitution for our (…)

• Indian Economy and the Crisis of a Borrowed Development Strategy

  18 August 2013, by Arun Kumar

  Introduction: The Current Situation
  The economic growth rate has been falling continuously while the consumer price inflation, current account deficit in the external sector and fiscal deficit in the Budget remain at high levels. The lack of confidence in the Indian economy is manifested by the sudden and sharp decline in the value of the rupee vis-a-vis the dollar in spite of the steps taken by the government and the Reserve Bank of India. The stock markets are also fluctuating wildly (…)

• Why CPI changed its Stand on Telangana’s Statehood

  18 August 2013

  by S. Sudhakar Reddy
  The decision on Telangana’s Statehood by the core committee of the UPA-II and Congress Working Committee has became a controversy in some circles. The CPI, BJP, NCP, BSP, and naturally Congress at the national level supported it, while the CPI-M, SP opposed it. As expected, the Gorkhaland and Bodoland separatist agitations intensified to pressurise the Union Government following the decision on Telangana. There are festivities in Telangana and angry agitations against (…)

• India’s Statehood Cauldron: From Simmer to Boil

  18 August 2013, by Ajay K. Mehra

  When Dr Manmohan Singh ascends the ramparts of the iconic Red Fort on August 15, 2013 to unfurl the national flag on the 67th Independence Day of the country, he would be announcing the creation of the Telangana State, the twentyninth of the Indian Union in the 57 years of reorganising the internal map of India. The significance of the event does not merely lie in another bifurcation or creation of another State, its significance is in several emerging sub-texts of Indian politics since the (…)

• We can do with Structured New States, but not Ad-hoc Partitions of India

  18 August 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The usual doublespeak accompanied the Congress party’s green signal to Telangana. The party’s entire rank-and-file in Andhra was “solidly behind the decision”, they said. The decision was not politically motivated, they said. The truth is exactly the opposite. The State’s Congress Chief Minister and five Telugu Ministers in the Union Cabinet were solidly against the party’s decision and several MLAs have resigned. And the party was motivated entirely by political (…)

• Look beyond Hyderabad for the Growth of Telangana

  18 August 2013, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  Telangana is set to become the 29th State of India. After much dilly-dallying the Congress Party finally approved the formation of Telangana State but before that there was a lot of heart-burn among the people. New ideas were floated for inclusion of Ananthpur and Kurnool into the new State against the wishes of the Telangana people. The biggest issue was Hyderabad where a lot of conspiracy theories were working such as declaration of joint capital or Union Territory. However, it is good (…)

• Natural Disasters: Lessons from Uttarakhand

  18 August 2013

  by Saumitra Mohan
  The recent cloudburst in Uttarakhand and subsequent natural disaster in the form of massive inundation should make many of us sit up and take notice. It is true that notwithstanding all disaster management plans, man is helpless against the vagaries of nature as also borne out by the regular loss of lives and property from tsunami, tornados, typhoons and hurricanes in developed countries like the USA and Japan. However, we can definitely be better prepared to face any (…)

• 

  Excellent Commentary on Assam-Centre Relationship in a Crucial Period

  18 August 2013

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Yogesh Puri
  Gopinath Bardoloi, “The Assam Problem” and Nehru’s Centre by Nirode K. Barooah; Bhabani Print and Publications, Guwahati; 2010; pp. 675.
  “...The subject I have touched in this book and the material used for the purpose are still largely untouched and unknown….No one else has cared to study Bardoloi in such depth as the present author.” (p. ix) Indeed, this is not a tall or boastful claim by the author. The claim is convincingly vindicated by his (…)

• Great Britain under the Spreading Fangs of Caste

  18 August 2013, by A K Biswas

  Part-I
  Caste in New Home
  In the voyage of caste to the Western hemi-sphere, the first port of call was Britain. The Hindus take pride that they did not conquer any nation with sword. But they exported caste to sabotage England internally. The cancer has gone deep and assumed so critical a dimension that Queen Elizabeth assented to an amend-ment in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill in April 2013 when the House of Commons bowed to reassure from the House of Lords to include (…)

• Adding up Opinion amidst Shifting Sands

  18 August 2013, by Uttam Sen

  With Precedents in Mind One operative aspect of David Thompson’s assessment of the re-drawing of Europe’s map in the 19th century was that it brought a disadvantaged ethnic group (outside Russia), namely, the Slavs, into the picture as members of new nation-states.1 They were the original tillers and owners of the land in several territories. This was the flip side of the European quest at the time, namely, of democracy as the means to nationalism.
  After the peace settlement of 1815 (…)