Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Death Penalty and Mohammad
 Afzal Guroo

  3 January 2013, by Mukul Dube

  There were fireworks and dancing in the streets when Ajmal Kasab was hanged. It is unlikely that the damage done in Mumbai in November 2008 was undone by this noise and boisterousness, and there is no reason to believe that the man’s execution will keep others from doing what he did; but the event, like a victory in a cricket match or a wedding in the family of the local zamindar, whether or not a legislator also, had to be celebrated. Importantly, the flag of National Security had been (…)

• Critical History of Our Times

  3 January 2013, by Rajesh Kumar Sharma

  BOOK REVIEW
  The Underside of Things: India and the World: A Citizen’s Miscellany, 2006-2011 by Badri Raina; Three Essays Collective; 2012; Pages: xxii+758; Paperback Rs 850.
  Badri Raina is like an all-season fruit-bearing tree. And the more he ages the mellower gets the fruit he bears. The 134 essays gathered between the covers of this book and written for Z-net over six years between 2006 and 2011 are ample testimony to his engaged critical productivity. Each essay is a timely, more (…)

• On the Margins of Survival

  3 January 2013, by Suranjita Ray

  In the context of the globalising economy, the hegemonic neo-liberal global policies have regained relevance. Based on large-scale indus-trialisation and privatisation, a higher economic growth focuses on increasing investment in terms of capital and technology. The growth-centric approach to development has contri-buted to an economy that is extractive in terms of resources and labour power. Ironically, this has resulted in further disparities and divisions between the geographical regions (…)

• Pedal Power as the 21st Century Charkha

  3 January 2013

  Building on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)
  by V.S. Ramamurthy and Saurabh Kumar
  The MGNREGS is a radical measure, based on the concept of entitlement of the most vulnerable sections of the nation’s citizenry, to (limited) fall-back employment legislated by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005. By placing some minimal purchasing power in the hands of the rural populace, it offers them a basic safety net of sorts and a modicum of (…)

• Combining Land Reforms and
 Watershed Development

  3 January 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  Many landless (or almost landless) persons who got land under various land-distribution programmes in India could not actually occupy and cultivate their land due to the resistance of powerful big landowners, including those who had encroached village common land. However, even among the land allottees who could actually occupy land, there were many who could not cultivate the land due to lack of irrigation and various land-improvement measures such as land-levelling and bunding. In many (…)

• Evolution of Political Corruption

  3 January 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  In just about a year’s time, we shall be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence when power was transferred from the unwilling hands of the British rulers to the leaders of our freedom struggle. And it is exactly fifty years now that in the last general election under colonial rule, in 1946, the leader of the Indian National Congress toured the length and breadth of this vast land promising the public that once the power was transferred, he and his party would hang (…)

• Questions of Freedom and People’s Emancipation — V (b)

  3 January 2013, by Kobad Ghandy

  Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail is writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile socialist states. It will comprise a series of six articles. The first article (covering Part I—The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012), the second one (covering Part II—Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 issue, the (…)

• Battle against Separatism

  3 January 2013, by K. Kamaraj

  I have heard it said that it is a sad commentary on our national character that after 15 years of our independent and free existence we should still be discussing the question of national integration. I am inclined to agree with this statement. But mere expression of sorrow at a development is not enough. We have to face the facts of life, however unpleasant they may be or may seem. We cannot escape them, if we are to survive as a virile and vibrant nation.
  What do we mean by the term (…)

• Secularism: Corner-stone of Our Political Faith

  3 January 2013, by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah

  Indian polity is an admixture of variegated ethos and divergent cultures. Many are the common ideals and objectives which we share. Amidst this apparent sea of diversity there is a common bond which unifies us, that is, our heritage of being Indian.
  At the centre of this great heritage is the concept of freedom of the spirit and oneness of mankind. It is this great principle that made Gandhiji identify himself with the high and the low and dedicate his life to removing untouchability and (…)

• Politics of Succession

  3 January 2013, by Rammanohar Lohia

  Barring us, Socialists, all Opposition politics in the country today have degenerated into succession politics.
  Opposition parties seem to have decided that the task of changing the attitudes of the people is far too difficult for them; or will at any rate take a lot more time than they think they can spare. The Prime Minister, according to them, is old and the Congress Party will soon have to find a successor to him. Who this successor will be is an open question—at least, so it appears. (…)