Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• BRICS: From Dialogue Forum to a Mechanism of Strategic Cooperation

  7 April 2013

  by T.R. Krishnan
  This article was written before the conclusion of the BRICS Summit at Durban. It is being published now as the validity of its contents remain undiminished till date. An analysis of the course of development of the BRICS grouping comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa leads one to the distinct conclusion that this organisation is gradually evolving from a dialogue forum with consultative functions into a body endowed with a fullscale mechanism of (…)

• North Korea’s Nuclear Ambition: Issues and Challenges

  7 April 2013

  by Sudhakar Vaddi
  The Korean Peninsula has again become a volatile region and two recent incidents have sent a strong message to the international community that peace is at stake. Tension escalated after North Korea’s controversial rocket launch in December and its third underground nuclear test on February 12, 2013. Both acts led to the Security Council resolutions 2087 and 2094 which debarred the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from testing or using nuclear or ballistic (…)

• Tax Residency Certificate eclipses Agriculture in Post-Budget 2013-14 Reactions

  7 April 2013, by J. George

  The post-Budget reactions to apprehensions on the tax residency certificate (TRC) expected from the foreign institutional investment (FII) or the foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals completely eclipsed the Finance Minister’s 22 per cent hike in the Central Plan outlays for agriculture and allied activities over the truncated 2012-13 revised estimates (RE). This is grossly unfair. There are, in fact, global concerns on the apparent business practices that erode the business base in (…)

• Primacy of Fiscal Deficit in 
Indian Budget

  7 April 2013

  by K.S. Chalam
  Ever since the Whig Prime Minister Robert Walpole referred to the Budget opening the leather bag in British Parliament in 1733, the term became popular throughout the world about an annual financial exercise. The first Budget in our country was presented for seven- and-a-half months in November 1947. The Constitution has made special provisions for the presentation of the annual financial statement (Budget) in Parliament. It has under-gone far-reaching changes in the Budget (…)

• Does GDP add to Human Welfare?

  7 April 2013, by Shyam Chand

  One of the legacies of World War II is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). During that War, a system of national income accounts was adopted to assess the production capacity available to support the War effort. The War ended in 1945 but the growth in the Gross Domestic Product has become an important indicator for policy-makers to assess national progress.
  The GDP, a measure of the gross domestic product, is an index of the gross market value of a nation’s monetised transaction for goods (…)

• Concept of Marital Rape in Islam

  7 April 2013

  by Asghar Ali Engineer
  Until yesterday a woman was considered a man’s property after marriage and sexual gratification with her was considered his absolute right. She could not deny her husband this right whether she wanted or not. In the early eighties of the last century Sisters in Islam, a women’s organisation in Malaysia, sent me a query whether there is anything like the concept of ‘marital rape’ in Islam.
  I went through all available traditional Islamic literature and found (…)

• The Mind and Heart of Lotika Sarkar, Legal Radical, Friend, Feminist

  7 April 2013

  TRIBUTE
  by Usha Ramanathan
  We have to marvel at how the world has changed since r*** was a four letter word, and young Lotika Sarkar (1923-2013), the first woman lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, shocked the department by teaching rape to her students.
  This is what happens when you let women into hallowed institutions of learning: they don’t understand that, even when they are allowed to be seen, they may not be heard about the obscene. This was our LS-given, early (…)

• Does the Girl-child Count? Census and Other Stories

  7 April 2013

  by Bijayalaxmi Nanda
  Alarming reports in national and inter-national journals claim that over the last 30 years India has eliminated 30 million girls before their birth. These figures find their basis in the country’s decadal census reports. Approximately one million girls, who should have been born as per demographic calculations, are eliminated every year. In thirty years this figure stands at 30 million!
  Census 2011 has recorded an all-time low in the child sex ratio (CSR) in India. (…)

• Forgotten Bhagat Singh

  7 April 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Strange, there was no meeting or seminar to remember Bhagat Singh who still lives in the memory of every Indian. I was yet in a primary school when the revolutionary Bhagat Singh was hanged 82 years ago, to be precise on March 23, 1931. Even though more than eight decades have passed, the feeling of his loss has not lessened. An uproar against the British united the country and so strong was the feeling that nobody was willing to name his comrade (Hans Raj Vohra), who agreed to be the (…)

• Bhagat Singh as I knew Him

  7 April 2013, by Ajoy Ghosh

  Legendary freedom fighter and martyr Bhagat Singh was executed, along with Sukhdev and Rajguru, on March 23, 1931 in Lahore Central Jail. On the occasion of the eightysecond anniversary of their martydom and in homage to Bhagat Singh’s abiding memory (he was and remains to this day a source of inspiration for our youth), we are reproducing the following excerpts from Ajoy Ghosh’s Bhagat Singh and His Comrades (published in Bombay, 1945); a close associate of Bhagat Singh, Ajoy Ghosh was (…)