Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• West Bengal: Understanding Trinamul Congress

  21 July 2013

  by Pratip Chattopadhyay
  I
  The politics of the Trinamul Congress has always been a continued search for alternates —be it in leadership style, be it in managing the sentiments of the masses or be it in creating new promises in governance. However alter-nates never arise from a scratch—alternates are some additions upon the previous experiences —and hence one can always find a resonance of the CPI-M brand in some of the slogans of the TMC [amra kara?—”Trinamul”, jachhe kara? “Trinamul” (…)

• Media’s Anti-Mamata Campaign

  21 July 2013, by Barun Das Gupta

  Within a few months of her coming to power in 2011, a section of the media—print as well as electronic—started a campaign against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, trying to belittle whatever she was doing and show her in a bad light. Mamata’s temperament made their task easy. She is easily provoked. Her responses are quite often knee-jerk, her comments brusque and off-the-cuff. This lands her frequently in avoidable controversy like her dismissing last year’s incident of a rape in Park Street (…)

• A Third Front minus Mamata and CPI-M?

  21 July 2013

  by Arko Dasgupta
  With the Indian voter eagerly anticipating next year’s general elections for the 16th Lok Sabha, the talk of the town seems to be the viability of a Third Front—a coalition of non-Indian National Congress and non-Bharatiya Janata Party led-parties—to challenge the electoral dominance of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, to set up shop in Parliament. Details are sketchy but as of this moment the composition of this (…)

• Remembering K.S. Krishnaswamy: Essential Mysorean and Sensitive Economist

  21 July 2013, by Devaki Jain

  TRIBUTE
  The ‘culture’ of a Mysorean has been captured through the writings of R. K. Narayan. However, for those who migrated to Delhi from Mysore, it was a subject we often went back to noting our uniqueness with a sense of contentment if not quiet pride. We cherished the fact that we were a rather laid-back people, with local concerns and great tolerance. Often seen as dull for not rising up like our neighbours, the Tamils or the Malayalis, living somewhat sedately, homebodies, seemingly (…)

• Ayodhya Conspiracy 1949: The Real Story

  21 July 2013, by Anil Rajimwale

  BOOK REVIEW
  Ayodhya: The Dark Night, The Secret History of Rama’s Appearance in Babri Masjid by Krishna Jha and Dhiren K. Jha; Harper Collins; 2012; pp. 193; price: Rs 499.
  This extraordinary research work unravels the key missing link in the Ayodhya conspiracy that deliberately and artificially created the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi controversy to communalise Indian politics to pave the path to power for communal-fascism, with the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha as the main culprits behind (…)

• Clean-chits Abound, Ministers Crawl, and India Falls.... O! What a Fall!

  21 July 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  In a surrealistic way, the rupee’s fall to record lows reflects India’s fall in prestige to record lows.... O! What a fall is there, my countrymen; then I, and you, and all of us fall down, whilst bloody shamelessness flourish over us.... At home unclean men get clean chits. Abroad America and Europe, China and even Pakistan slap us around, and we turn the other cheek. We have become a country that can be taken for granted. We just don’t count.
  In other countries Prime (…)

• Bodhgaya, Sleaze, Judicial Pronouncements

  16 July 2013, by SC

  Even though as many as 769 villages still remain cut off with restoration of road connectivity that had been severely affected by the landslides during the disaster and telecommunication cables snapped by the calamity nowhere in sight, the Uttarakhand tragedy, overtaken by several other developments, notably the terror strike at Bodhgaya, has been relegated into the background as was only to be expected. However, more than three weeks after flash floods and landslides wreaked havoc in the (…)

• Collapse of the Rupee and the Neoliberal Response

  16 July 2013

  by Krishnakumar S.
  In the background of the falling rupee, there has been a series of articles in the financial press by economists and policy-advisers of the neoliberal persuasion, making a strong case for a further dose of liberalisation. Even while institutions and policy-making centres in the developed world have abandoned the palliatives based on the Washington Consensus, one is at a loss to understand as to why the Indian liberals still continue to have infinite faith in the capacity (…)

• A Bid to Dilute Kashmir’s Status

  16 July 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is once again Article 370 on the special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Again the BJP has thrown the first stone. The party’s top leader, L.K. Advani, has said that the Article should be scrapped. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has said in reply: “Over our dead bodies.” He tends to over-react but he is quite right in saying that the Article is sacrosanct.
  The Article was the result of long discussions held between Srinagar and New Delhi at the time of the State’s (…)

• Talking to the Taliban

  16 July 2013, by Mohan K. Tikku

  The proposed talks with the Taliban on the future dispensation in Afghanistan appeared to be teetering close to the brink on June 22 when Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai announced in Kabul that his government will not be available for participation in the talks in Doha any more. What was galling for the Afghan President was that Washington, in its apparent keenness to reach a quick-fix deal with the Taliban, was marginalising Kabul’s role even before the talks had actually begun. The (…)