Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Killing of Mahendra Karma: An Act of Popular Justice

  15 June 2013, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The Indian state characterised the Maoist insurgency as the biggest internal security problem for the country. The spectre of Maoism has returned to haunt the state in the wake of the brutal killing of a number of top Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh including the founder of anti-Maoist forces, Mahendra Karma, by the Maoists.
  Mahendra Karma, who represented Bastar in the Lok Sabha and Dantewada in the State Assembly, founded two anti-Maoist forces in Chhattisgarh: Jan Jagaran Abhiyan in (…)

• Foreign Policy and the Federal Imprint

  15 June 2013

  by Tridivesh Singh Maini and Arko Dasgupta
  Both the main political outfits of Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK and Opposition DMK, recently competed with each other in taking a belligerent stand vis-à-vis Sri Lanka.
  While the latter pulled out of the UPA coalition, because it felt New Delhi had approved a watered-down UN resolution to look into alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan Army during their campaign against the LTTE in 2009, the ruling party was not to be left far behind with Chief (…)

• Sethusamudram: A Project Crippled By Myth

  15 June 2013, by K G Somasekharan Nair

  The Government of India designed and launched the Sethusamudram shipping channel project in 2005 for which Rs 25,000 crores was the expenditure estimated then. Now ships from the Abrabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal have to circumnavigate Sri Lanka because between Dhanushkodi of Tamil Nadu and Thalaimannar of Sri Lanka there is a shallow sea along with soil formations like broken bund. If a deep waterway is made by dredging out 83 kms there, ships from the Cape Comorin side to Kolkata and (…)

• Cricket Scene, By-poll Outcome, NCTC

  9 June 2013, by SC

  The country’s cricket scene has turned murkier than what it was presumed to be when the IPL spot-fixing scandal first hit the headlines.
  The clean-up operation in the BCCI turned out to be a sham: at the organisation’s emergency Working Committee meeting at Chennai on June 2 the prior resignations of two leading BCCI Board members—Sanjay Jagdale and Ajay Shirke (its Treasurer)—and that of IPL Commissioner Rajeev Shukla had virtually no impact on BCCI President N. Srinivasan who refused to (…)

• Doyen of Indian Feminist Movement

  9 June 2013, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  TRIBUTE
  Vinadi (Dr Mrs Vina Mazumdar) passed away in the wee-hours of May 30, 2013. There were other illustrious leaders of the Indian feminist movement prior to Vinadi but the singular contribution of Vinadi was to ensure political empowerment of women in India.
  Daughter of one of the pioneer hydrological engineers of India, Vinadi was a born rebel. One of her personal habits—like chain-smoking in her prime age—was not so much addiction to tobacco as a sign of defiance of the (…)

• Tribute: Vina Mazumdar

  9 June 2013, by Neerja Chowdhury

  Vina Mazumdar, who passed away at the age of 86 last week, sensitised a whole generation of women about their rights and roles in the 1970s and 1980s—and nudged many like me to question long accepted assumptions about ourselves. She, and her comrade-in-arms, lawyer Lotika Sarkar, as also Jai Chandiram, one of the pioneers of Doordarshan when it was set up—both of them also passed away recently—can truly be called independent India’s nation-builders.
  I remember how often we, who were (…)

• Naxalism versus Corruption

  9 June 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  My liberal friends tell me to understand the Naxalites, not to condemn them. I wish I could follow their advice. But how do I reconcile the difference between the Nexalites, who killed this week some 25 Congress leaders at Chhattisgarh, and the two Nigerians, who beheaded a British soldier a few days ago at London in public? For me, both are terrorists, fundamentalists, the first from the Left and the other from the Right. And does ideology mean anything when the brutalities of one are no (…)

• Why Naxalism?

  9 June 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  This article was written by N.C. fortythree years ago as ‘Observer’ in Mainstream (May 2, 1970) during the first wave of the Naxalite movement.
  The spate of terrorist violence in West Bengal has pin-pointed public attention on what has come to be known as the Naxalite problem. Many so-called specialists on communism have aired very profound views on the nature of this phenomenon and have not hesitated to deliver homilies on how to deal with it.
  The Union Home (…)

• Eliminating Salwa Judum Leader Mahendra Karma

  9 June 2013

  by Arun Srivastava
  On May 25, 2013, a detachment of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army of the CPI (Maoist) carried out the most gruesome attack in Sukma of Chhattisgarh in which at least 27 Congress leaders, activists and policemen, including Mahendra Karma, the Salwa Judum leader of the State, were gunned down. The Maoists have legitimised the killing as, according to them, Karma represented the oppressive face of the State administration. The handout released by the Maoists after the (…)

• Tridib Chowdhuri and his Growing Relevance

  9 June 2013, by Pramothes Mukherjee

  The birth centenary of the exemplary parliamentarian and extraordinary Left leader, Tridib Chowdhuri of the RSP, was observed last December, that is, six months ago, without any major celebration in West Bengal, leave aside the country as a whole. We remember that outstanding Revolutionary Socialist with the following article by a distinguished leader of his party and erstwhile Member of the Lok Sabha.
  Reasons
  The Sheikh Hasina Government of Bangladesh has decided to confer posthumous (…)