Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Two Eminent Editors and a Young Reporter

  7 November 2012, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  Several eminent contemporaries of Nikhil Chakravartty have already written about his many-sided accomplishments, and what I can add may appear relatively quite insignificant in comparison. Nevertheless, I feel that it may add a new dimension to the understanding of Nikhil-ji if I relate my experiences of how this eminent editor interacted with a very young and inexpe-rienced reporter.
  Yes, I was a very young and inexperienced writer (age 21 years) when I first met Nikhil-ji (…)

• Myth, Reality and Moral Science

  7 November 2012

  by A. RASHID
  The paradox, which every religion has been grappling with unsuccessfully, is this. On the one hand it demands blind faith to accept its tenets and on the other it tries to make those tenets look scientific and rational. It refuses to see the obvious that a rational idea does not require blind faith. Rationality has been the casualty in this undesirable struggle. As a consequence established religions had to resist science. Though very late in coming, the acceptance of (…)

• A Ray of Hope in an Atmosphere of Despair

  7 November 2012, by Sandeep Pandey

  Saeeda Diep is a Lahore-based activist who has been working consistently on issues of human rights, women’s rights, democracy, against patriarchy, feudalism and communalism and on peace and friendship with India. Quite obviously to work in an atmosphere of religious bigotry and everyday violence is not easy for a woman in Pakistan.
  On September 22, she had organised a convention in Lahore on the occasion of 85,000 signatures collected over the last eight months in the cities of Lahore, (…)

• Clean JP versus Corrupt Dynasty

  7 November 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  Rvolutionaries have a short span of fame. They are forgotten sooner than their length of struggle and sacrifice has lasted. Mahatma Gandhi, who ousted the British rule, is mostly remembered because of the Indian currency notes which carry his photo. So is the case with the founders of Pakistan and Bangladesh—Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman; they are beaming through the currency notes in their respective countries.
  Poor Jayaprakash Narayan enjoys no such honour (…)

• The Right to Privacy Does Not Mean the Right to Do Wrong in Private

  7 November 2012, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  The bad news is that there seems to be no end to the plundering of India. Sign any deal, there is kickback. Auction any resource, there is quid pro quo. Spot any stretch of land, there is hanky-panky. Worse, where there is hanky-panky, there are namby-pamby ministers grovelling to justify it. Two gems came up last week. As scandals swirled around the nation’s son-in-law, Salman Khurshid said: “Sonia is my leader and I would defend her till my last breath.” Jayanti Natarajan (…)

• After Fifty Years

  31 October 2012, by SC

  Fifty years have passed since the troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), under the directive of Chairman Mao Zedong and his colleagues in the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) leadership in Beijing, crossed our frontier in the north-east in massive numbers to “teach Jawaharlal Nehru a lesson” and delivered a heavy blow on not just India and its Union Government but peace and harmony in our region and the world at large.
  The country was doubtless traumatised as the Nehru administration, (…)

• Agreement between the Ministry of Rural
 Development (GOI) and Jan Satyagraha

  31 October 2012

  DOCUMENT ON LAND REFORMS
  1. National Land Reforms Policy: While land reforms is clearly a State subject under the Constitution, the MoRD acknowledges that a National Land Reforms Policy announced by the Central Government could have its own importance. The MoRD will initiate a dialogue with States immediately and put out a draft of this policy for public debate and discussion in the next four-six months and to be finalised soon thereafter. The draft Land Reforms Policy, prepared by Jan (…)

• On Malala and Our ‘Malalas’

  31 October 2012, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Malala … what a lovely name. And with that her very spirit, her grit. Her beautiful eyes and that innocence writ large. For minutes at a stretch I’d sat staring at her well-featured face, and then took to reading and re-reading those backgrounders to that attack on her. The Taliban at their ugliest. Brutally targeting this outspoken teenager in the Swat Valley.
  Now coming to the bigger picture, which sure does lurk around. Hovering not too far, from that very locale. The why and (…)

• World Food Day and We, the People, Resolve

  31 October 2012

  by SOHEB LOKHANDWALA
  “To those who are hungry, God is bread,” is what Mahatma Gandhi said before independence (1946). Now the question is whether it is valid even after 65 years of our freedom. Unfortunately, the answer is in the affirmative despite the perceived economic growth in a few sectors/segments and introduction and opera-tionalisation of various welfare schemes.
  A country’s real growth is valued by its human development index based on child mortality, child malnutrition and (…)

• Heralding Irreversibility of the ‘Twentyfirst Century Socialism’ Project

  31 October 2012

  HUGO CHAVEZ’S VICTORY IN VENEZUELA
  by SRINIVASAN RAMANI
  Nullifying the dire projections from the Western media about a possible end to the Hugo Chavez’s presidency in Venezuela, the leader of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) managed to retain his post by defeating his opponent, Henrique Capriles, representing the united Opposition’s Coalition for Democratic Unity, in the recently concluded presidential elections in that country. Chavez’s victory mar-gin of 11 per cent was (…)