Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Song of the Juniors

  3 January 2013

  Our early years had been scadling pain, Our times hung heavy all the while, What calamities, what disasters to pass through! On the wide wilderness of hugetime I see your hand beckoning under your banyon shade With the boon of your thousand roots— And our dead boyhood and youth come to life. Not to the enchantress, it was of man’s own making, Of men of the earth, in man’s homage to man! In pin-pointed eyes and ever-alert work, That ever-quick heart, Lenin’s mind and life Gave wings to (…)

• The Role of Sequestration in Reversing Anthropogenic Climate Change

  3 January 2013

  by Anandi Sharan
  Much has been written about the need to adapt to climate change, to help the poor and the vulnerable. Much more has been written about how to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions to encourage capitalists to invest in renewable energy,1 rather than in fossil fuels and nuclear energy, in order to maintain living standards for the middle class without harming the environment. But these are partial responses to a problem which is actually systemic in nature and thus needs a (…)

• US Presidential Election 2012

  3 January 2013

  by N.V.K. Murthy
  A TV commentator speaking about the 2012 US Presidential Election said it was an election where hope was pitted against memory. A couple of months prior to the election, many predicted that Obama had an uphill task and with an unemployment rate higher than nine per cent, it was almost impossible for him to get elected for his second term. Much was made by the Republican Party members about the unpopu-larity of the health care reforms which they had christened as (…)

• Mistaken Stress on Doubling the
 Fund for Biological Diversity

  3 January 2013

  by Anwar Sadat
  Finance constitutes one of the most crucial aspects of negotiations dealing with the two major global environmental problems—biological diversity and climate change. It not only has the potential to ensure broadest possible participation in dealing with the global environmental problems but any serious disagreement on this can hold other important issues to ransom. In the eleventh Conference of the Parties meeting to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (hereinafter (…)

• Whither Left?

  3 January 2013, by C.N. Chitta Ranjan

  After the fall of the Janata Government at the Centre, a process of realignment of political forces appeared to have begun, rousing hopes for the emergence of a broad Left and democratic front embracing the whole spectrum covered by this description.
  Not only the two Communist Parties and the smaller Leftist parties but many others, including anti-authoritarian and anti-communal elements in the major national parties, seemed then to be moving purposefully in this healthy direction, and (…)

• For a New Frontier

  3 January 2013, by C.N. Chitta Ranjan

  Fifteen years have gone by and yet the Kashmir dispute has defied settlement. And today it has got entangled in a mass of other issues, ranging from defence against the Chinese menace to the securing of Western aid.
  The six rounds of ministerial level talks may have heard many a sophisticated proposal, pertaining to maps and alignments. They may have been accompanied by hectic back-stair—sometimes even frontporch—lobbyings by interested outsiders, but there was something severely missing (…)

• Bijbehara: A Challenge to Nation’s Conscience

  3 January 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Autumn has set in—the chinar in its gorgeous robe. But it is an autumn of bitter sorrow for the hapless people of Kashmir. The Valley which was known as the paradise on earth has been turned into a trough of hatred, of blood and tears. On Friday last week the portals of Hazratbal were barred as the Indian Army had laid siege of the mosque complex in pursuit of the militants. To protest against this siege of the holy of holies for every Kashmiri Muslim, the common folk in the small town of (…)

• Grim Warning from Bhopal

  3 January 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It was a massacre of innocents by all counts. What happened at the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal in the early morning of December 3 was not just a tragedy but a heinous crime which killed nearly two thousand and hospitalised countless others, brings out something much more ghastly than the hazards of modern industrialisation.
  The enormity of the crime—unprecedented in our times—lies not merely in any negligence on the part of the workers and superintending staff behind the leakage of the (…)

• After Nehru; Lobbies Squabble

  3 January 2013

  As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.
  It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to any man. For Jawaharlal Nehru was, for the vast mass that is engulfed in sorrow today, not just a symbol of freedom, he was part of their very personality: it is difficult for this entire generation of ours (…)

• Good-bye to all that

  3 January 2013

  There comes a moment in the life of a paper, as in the life of many an individual, when the sense of purpose is in danger of being lost by the constraints of circumstances. Such a moment has come today for Mainstream, after more than fourteen years of toil and tribulations, of successes as well as setbacks.
  Throughout these fourteen years, there has never been any questioning of the cherished values, the ideals and principles, born out of the struggle of this nation for freedom, democracy (…)