Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Attack on Malala — Islamic or Un-Islamic?

  3 December 2012

  by ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER
  The recent attack on Malala Yusafzai, a 14-year-old tribal girl from the Pakhtunkhwah province of Pakistan, shocked not only Pakistan but the whole world. There was near unanimity among the people of Pakistan that the attack was not justified and there were demonstrations against it and collective prayers were organised for her recovery. Even tribal leaders from her town condemned this outrage. This news was carried prominently by the international media. Fortunately (…)

• Pitiable Plight of Women

  3 December 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  Even as Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old activist who advocated girls’ education, recovers from the bullet shots by the Taliban at Swat in Pakistan, there is no let up in atrocities against women in the subcontinent. Haryana in India witnessed another rape of a Dalit girl and yet another honour killing by the parents of their daughter in the northern part of Pakistan. In Delhi, the national Capital, a married girl committed suicide with her daughter, because her in-laws had not stopped (…)

• Menace of Corruption in India — the Way Out

  3 December 2012, by Rajindar Sachar

  CAG Vinod Rai’s pained expression on the brazenness of government decisions—obviously alluding to the way decisions have been taken resulting in corrupt deals in the matter of telecom, coal allocations, miscues of allotments of land on political grounds—has understandably touched the raw nerve amongst the politicians, though it has been welcomed by the average person.
  Corruption is not merely a moral question. It eats into the vitals of the economy and leads to the loss of faith in the (…)

• Suu Kyi’s discovery of India

  3 December 2012, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit turned out to be profoundly meaningful. With an old world charm, she simply held up the mirror to show us what we were and what we have become as a nation. The image staring back at us looks ghastly, and makes (some of) us feel low.
  No one knows what were the real thoughts racing through Suu Kyi’s mind which she chose to keep to herself. She is excessively polite— unlike Nelson Mandela. To be sure, this was not the India she knew in her youth. No doubt, she could (…)

• The Vulnerable Side of Suu Kyi

  3 December 2012

  by PETER RONALD DESOUZA
  The Nehru Memorial Lecture, given by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on November 14, 2012 in New Delhi, was a master class performance. It was measured. It was poetic. It was political. It was philosophical. It did not employ the rhetorical flourishes so favoured by orators nor did it pander to the conceits of the audience and manipulate their emotions just to get their applause. In fact the tone of her delivery was almost constant, with just a little blip for irony, a brief (…)

• ‘Pro-Life’ also Means a Mother’s Right to Life

  3 December 2012, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  The death of Savita Halappanvar, an Indian dentist in Ireland, due to refusal of abortion by the doctors in Dublin has outraged every human being who loves life. Irish laws prohibit abortion though a 1992 court ruling suggested that it could be permitted if there is ‘real and substantive’ risk to the life of mother. However, this court ruling fell on deaf years as doctors failed to respond to her deteriorating condition which resulted in her untimely death.
  Thousands of people protested in (…)

• Shaping China’s India Policy

  3 December 2012

  by SRIKANTH KONDAPALLI
  While no specific policy vis-a-vis India had been mentioned in the just concluded 18th Communist Party Congress at Beijing, it appears that for the next five years certain broad policy prescriptions outlined in the work report could have implications for India.
  In the change of guard, none of the seven Polit-Bureau Standing Committee members have visited India in recent times; nor is there any evidence that any of them have extensively dealt with Indian affairs. (…)

• Eighteenth Party Congress: New Land Reforms in China?

  3 December 2012

  by NAMRATA HASIJA
  The 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) commenced on November 8, 2012 amidst speculations from every corner of the globe about the closed-door meetings. Hu Jintao’s opening remarks gave many leads as to what the main themes being discussed were. However, his statement, “We should give more to farmers and take less from them and lift restrictions over their economic activities”, on the condition of farmers and land grabs has made many speculate about (…)

• Afghanistan: Karzai Visit - Looming Danger

  3 December 2012, by Mahendra Ved

  In the months that he survived the exit of the Russian forces from his country, Afghanistan’s former slain President Najibullah would visit New Delhi to seek support and succour from India that was itself left ‘friendless’ when the Soviet Union collapsed.
  There was little the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao could do to help him, being itself hit by a serious economic crisis and militarily by insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir after Pakistan diverted the Mujahideen returning from (…)

• Factions and Big Money

  3 December 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  At the time of writing these lines, there is excitement in the Capital about the imminence of reshuffle of the Union Cabinet. This is of course a source of hypertension for many of the Ministers as to whether they would be wrested of their present portfolios and downgraded with the charge of less important ones. There are others who have been getting restless waiting to be called to join the Council of Ministers. While there are indications that this time the Prime (…)