Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Letter to the Sahitya Akademi President

  16 July 2013

  by Ivy Imogene Hansdak
  Dear Sir,
  I wish to draw your attention to certain anomalies in the policy used by the Sahitya Akademi in the nomination of recipients for the Annual Sahitya Akademi Awards in Santhali (Santali) language and literature. It is noted that only writers using the Ol Chiki script are being considered for the Sahitya Akademi Awards, despite the fact that Santhali is an oral language (like all tribal languages of India) and its speakers presently use at least five major (…)

• Between Hope and Disappointment

  7 July 2013, by SC

  While the last group of 150 persons was flown to safety from Badrinath on July 2, that is, seventeen days after flash floods due to nature’s fury from a sudden cloud-burst ravaged Uttarakhand, several developments of the last few days, including those related to the Himalayan tsunami, have attracted public attention.
  It was reported today that even after so many days since the tragedy struck, several villages in the Rudraprayag district, one of the worst affected by the disaster, have not (…)

• Declaration of the Left Parties’ National Convention

  7 July 2013

  DOCUMENT
  The Left parties—represented by the CPI, CPI-M, RSP and Forward Bloc—held a National Convention in New Delhi on July 1, 2013. The following Declaration was adopted at the Convention.
  Sixty six years after independence, the aim of a developed and prosperous India with equal rights for all citizens seems a distant goal. The current plight of the country is due to the nature of capitalist development which favours the rich and harms the poor. The government’s policies are (…)

• Swami Vivekananda — A Masiha
 of the Masses

  7 July 2013, by Ajeet Jawed

  The following article is being published on the occasion of Swami Vivekananda’s one hundred and eleventh death anniversary on July 4. On January 12 this year we had observed his one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary.
  Nineteenth century India produced a number of eminent men and women who with their exceptional intellect and wisdom enriched different aspects of Indian life. The most important among them was Swami Viveka-nanda who in a short span of life, which lasted less than forty (…)

• Manmade Disaster Plays Havoc

  7 July 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Not long ago, a disaster in any part of the country would elicit national response. People would go door-to-door to collect money, clothes, utensils, medicines and many other things of daily use to transmit through agencies which were voluntarily engaged in relief and rehabilitation work. The attitude has changed in the last few years. People are, no doubt, concerned and sympathetic. But there is no countrywide effort to organise help. The atmosphere is no more animated with the zeal which I (…)

• Nature and Process of History in Indian Democracy

  7 July 2013, by Indrajeet Singh

  We do not drive history according to our own desires and wishes; rather history leads us with its force taking all kinds of species through the different stations and temporary destinations. There are a few historical moments when mankind is able to witness what it desires. History is perhaps not a straight line process but it consists of crooked lines which push humans into the vortex of pain, uncertainties and happy times. Only a handful of people take advantage of the happy moments of (…)

• Don’t belittle the Army, Mr Rambo-NaMbo

  7 July 2013

  by Priyanka Chaturvedi
  The news this week that no one would have possibly missed and debated is the one that appeared in a leading national daily. The headline shouted, “Narendra Modi lands in Uttarakhand, flies out with 15,000 Gujaratis”. Clearly, Mr Modi’s propaganda machinery was at work again and NaMo bhakts on social media were lapping it up—he was the biggest superhero this country, nay this planet, nay this universe had ever seen. But neither Mr Modi nor his bhakts realised the true (…)

• VVIP Trips to Uttarakhand and Kashmir

  7 July 2013, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  No, sir, aerial surveys won’t do in the Uttarakhand region. You cannot view disasters from that far away, safe positioning! You got to be right there amongst your people to try and reach out to them.
  It’s disgusting how the VVIPs are touring the devastated region in that detached sort of way at this stage when thousands have been killed and ruined. And it’s more than disgusting to know that even now these political creatures are making aerial surveys. As representatives of the (…)

• Erasing Enemies: America’s New Way of War

  7 July 2013, by Eddie J Girdner

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti; New York: Penguin Press; 2013.
  America has been at war for more than a decade. There is no end in sight to this new perpetual war. The battlefield is now the entire world. After 2001, the Bush Neoconservatives essentially declared a war against the entire globe, against whoever dared to oppose the Empire. In a larger sense, of course, this is but an extension of the war for (…)

• A Clarification

  7 July 2013, by Prabhat Patnaik

  COMMUNICATION
  I have become aware, very belatedly alas, of a piece by Comrade Sailendra Nath Ghosh (Mainstream, April 16, 2011), which takes me to task for an article of mine “Why the Left Matters” (Mainstream, March 26, 2011). The only reason I can adduce for not reading Comrade Ghosh’s article when it was published is that I was myself located at the time in Thiruvananthapuram, working for the State Planning Board of the LDF Government in Kerala, and had at best sporadic access to (…)