Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• India-France Relations: Tremendous Scope Ahead

  26 February 2013, by Bharti Chhibber

  The recent visit of the new French President, Francois Hollande, to India can be seen as an important stepping-stone in developing an enduring and close partnership. It may not have resulted in inking the much-talked-about Rafale jet deal (the sale of 126 Rafale combat aircraft to the Indian Air Force), which is being negotiated since January 2012, but the fact that this was President Hollande’s first visit to a large Asian democracy and he chose India over Brazil, Russia and South Africa (…)

• Scandalous

  26 February 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The Bofors kickback scandal is fast assuming the dimension of a serious crisis for the Rajiv Government. For this, the Prime Minister has to a large measure hold himself and the bunch of cronies and hangers-on—whom he has been keeping under his tattered wings—responsible.
  The latest to bring discredit for him is the dishonourable conduct of the Joint Parlia-mentary Committee (JPC) which was set up to investigate into the identity of those who got the bribe money of (…)

• Afzal’s Hanging and its Aftermath

  26 February 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  I was at the Parliament House when it was attacked in December 2001. Members like me were furious over the incident and the first suspicion was on Pakistan. It turned out to be true because the three who escaped were from Pakistan. Afzal Guru was from Kashmir and hence the same mix-up of Kashmir with Pakistan.
  How to sort out the Kashmir problem or, more so, why it has been held hanging thus far are questions which need to be answered by the rulers, both at Srinagar and New Delhi. State (…)

• AFSPA: Who Rules India?

  26 February 2013

  by Walter Fernandes
  Finally a senior Union Minister has made official what many knew already. The government cannot even make the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) more human because the Army does not want it diluted, leave alone repealed. In his K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture on February 6, 2013 at the Institute of Defence Studies, P. Chidambaram said: “We can’t move forward because there is no consensus. The present and former Army Chiefs have taken a strong position that the Act (…)

• Khurshid’s Challenge to Antony is Intriguing

  26 February 2013, by M K Bhadrakumar

  This is carnival time for the detractors of Defence Minister A. K. Antony. Of course, none of them in their senses would dare to implicate Antony in the VVIP helicopter scandal. He remains the ‘Saint’. The saving grace in the present scandal is that Antony is relentlessly cracking the whip.
  Obviously, getting Antony out of the way has been an obsession for the pimps and dalals who feed on defence deals. Their lament and criticism has been that Antony is too slow in decision-making on arms (…)

• Will the Land Acquisition Bill lead to More Violent Conflicts?

  26 February 2013, by Ambrose Pinto

  There have been violent conflicts on land acquisition across the country especially when the land of the poor has been taken away without proper compensation by the state for public and private ventures. In all stories of acquisition it is the land mafia that has come to play a crucial role in pauperising the ordinary villagers and farmers and evicting them from their land with meagre compensation. In the major cities of India there are “estate agents” with gangs who threaten and intimidate (…)

• How to Extinguish Bodo-Muslim Conflict and other Ethnic Conflicts in Assam

  26 February 2013, by Syed Shahabuddin

  According to the tentative results of Census 2011, Assam with an area 78,438 square kilometres has a multi-ethnic population of 31.2 million, distributed in 27 districts. It is said to have 72 identifiable communities including a large number of ethnic tribes who have their own religion and language, though many of them have been culturally Hinduised. The Bodos are the biggest tribe, claiming to be the original inhabitants; they are scattered all over the State but concentrated in the (…)

• Theorising Corruption in a Hurry

  26 February 2013, by Badri Raina

  From all the elaborations that have now come forth, it would seem that this is what the sadly beleaguered Ashish Nandy had meant to say at the Jaipur Festival: that for thousands of years corruption has been the preserve of the upper castes, but the fact now that India’s Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, and increasingly Scheduled Tribes as well are vigorous participants in this handed-down practice testifies to the energy of the ongoing social revolution in contemporary India. (…)

• The Follies of Empire: America in Iraq and Afghanistan

  26 February 2013, by Eddie J Girdner

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2006. Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.
  The author is a journalist who writes for the Washington Post. These two recent books reveal many interesting details about America’s two latest imperial ventures. America is an empire, as the late Chalmers Johnson documented so well in his (…)

• Direct Cash Transfer: Who Does It Benefit?

  26 February 2013, by S G Vombatkere

  The following article was written sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) of subsidy to domestic LPG consumers starts on February 15, 2013, when LPG agencies will supply LPG refills on upfront cash payment of the full (unsubsidised) cost of the refill. The subsidy amount will be credited to the consumer’s bank account based on the consumer’s UID-Aadhaar number provided to the LPG agency and the bank. DCT is enabled by implementing (…)