Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Aping the Adversary

  28 April 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  It is surprising how intelligent people in politics sometimes take up positions which should logically belong to their adversaries.
  The Muslim League in 1940 picked up the so-called ‘two-nation theory’ which a bunch of extremist intellectuals had first coined to back up their demand for Pakistan. Other parties in India rejected it. The Congress made it clear that it did not accept the theory itself though it agreed to the partitioning of the country on the basis of (…)

• The Great Land Rush: Fake Consensus at All-party Meet

  28 April 2013, by Sandhya Jain

  Farmers bodies are gearing up to oppose the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, which was supposedly amended to improve compensation to farmers under directions from Congress party President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, as the new draft perverts the meaning of “public purpose” to benefit multinationals and facilitate creation of special economic zones for private industry.
  The Bill, reportedly cleared by an all-party meeting on April 18, as a (…)

• In the Service of the Prime Minister

  28 April 2013

  by Arun Srivastava
  From funding the elections to choosing the prime ministerial candidate, the corporate sector has acquired enormous political power and has, in the process, emerged as the sole determinant factor of the destiny of India. Never before in the 66 years of independent India had any prime ministerial candidate to walk on the ramps of the corporate houses as recently Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi had to do at the FICCI and CII meets on the plea of elucidating their views and (…)

• Heightened Tensions in POSCO Project Area

  28 April 2013

  DOCUMENT
  Fact-Finding Report on the Situation in the Wake of Bomb Blast in Jagatsinghpur District, Odisha
  Executive Summary
  On March 9, 2013, a 12-member team consisting of human rights activists, journalists, academicians, democratic rights and civil liberty activists, conducted a fact-finding visit to the Patana and Gobindapur villages of the Dhinkia Panchayat in the Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha. On March 2, 2013, a bomb blast took place in the Patana village and three people (…)

• In Response to Dr Gilbert Sebastian

  28 April 2013, by Krishna Majumdar

  COMMUNICATION
  This is in response to the article published in Mainstream on March 16, 2013, "Patriarchy and the Rise of Sexual Assaults in India: An Explanation" by Dr Gilbert Sebastian.
  Violence against women is a fact of life in India, as indeed in most parts of the world. As Dr Sebastian rightly points out, from female foeticide to infanticide, from domestic violence to molestation to sexual assault, females are neither safe unborn or born, inside the home or out of it. Undoubtedly a (…)

• Why Iran is Crucial for Both India and Pakistan

  28 April 2013

  by Tridivesh Singh Maini and Usman Shahid
  The following article has been sent to us by Usman Shahid, a Pakistani national, from Lahore. He and Tridivesh Singh Maini (who is an Indian) have recently co-authored a book on Indo-Pak people-to-people contact to be published soon.
  The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline turned out to be the swan song of the Zardari Government as the President formally inaugurated the so- called peace pipeline project worth $ 7.5 billion with his Iranian counterpart on (…)

• How India is Turning into China

  28 April 2013

  Noted writer Pankaj Mishra wrote the following piece that appeared in The New Republic (December 21, 2012) from where it is being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, alongwith a response from retired IFS officer Saurabh Kumar for the benefit of our readers.
  by Pankaj Mishra
  China is shakily authoritarian while India is a stable democracy—indeed, the world’s largest. So goes the cliché, and it is true, up to a point. But there is a growing resemblance between the two countries. A decade (…)

• Comments on "How India is Turning into China"

  28 April 2013, by Saurabh Kumar

  The article brings to bear the writer’s formidable skills for broad-brush painting of the contemporary scene with a keen eye on history to give us some valuable insights about the commonalities in the current travails of the two “rising” Asian powers that had set out on lofty historical missions more or less together, albeit with contrasting political systems—the “profound crisis of legitimacy” confronting them both, above all.
  Attributing the “growing resemblance” to the state in India (…)

• Political Reading of "Well Done Abba" a Tale of Our Times

  28 April 2013

  by Raj Kumar Thakur
  The very idea that one’s self is independent from the larger socio-political realities is very clearly brought under scrutiny—instead what emerges is connected lives, with water, the chief source of life, being at the core of the movie. Armaan Ali, the chief protagonist of the movie, comes out a champion, a champion who goes beyond the very idea of self, his rebellion a marker of restlessness and dissatisfaction on the part of the common man. The idea of the common (…)

• A Rejoinder to Grover Furr: Points Not Met

  28 April 2013, by Anil Rajimwale

  COMMUNICATION
  I went through Grover Furr’s reply (Mainstream, April 6, 2013) to my comments. Unfortunately, he meets none of the points raised by me, and repeats his views mechanically without dialec-tical logic and arguments. Everybody is, of course, entitled to one’s views. But when one is arguing a point or points, one should at least try to meet them. Simple and general statements do not help resolving issues. Besides, most unfortunately, Furr has gone personal and has attacked me as (…)