Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Face of the New World Order

  11 October 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Turmoil in heaven—the heaven which is presided over by the supreme superpower of the day, possessing History’s largest number of deadly nuclear bombs and missiles, the Cruise to the Patriot, who at the same time lords it over the world’s largest money-lending bank. Yes, in such a country advertised the world over as the ultimate repository of power and affluence—in the mighty United States of America—there has erupted a spate of violence brought about by fierce racial (…)

• The Imperial ‘Pivot’ to Asia-Pacific
 and the New Cold War

  11 October 2012, by Ninan Koshy

  The Pentagon document on Strategic Guid-ance, entitled “Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for Twenty First Century”, released in January 2012, has inaugurated a new cold war. If the theatre of the ‘old’ Cold War was Europe, the new theatre is the Asia-Pacific. The docu-ment affirms that the US will of necessity rebal-ance towards the Asia-Pacific region. ‘Rebalance’ seems to have replaced the earlier term ‘pivot’. The document maps the region as “the arc extending from the Western (…)

• Questions of Freedom and People’s Emancipation — III

  11 October 2012, 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 five to six articles. The first article (covering Part I – The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012) and the second one (covering Part II – Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 (…)

• We Are Back to the Numbers Game Again: Sonia – Mamata + Mayawati = Democracy

  11 October 2012, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  We have had good governments and bad governments since independence. This is the first time we are having a government suspended in midair, unable to go up to heaven or come down to earth. In modernistic terms, it is comparable to the weightlessness astronauts experience inside space shuttles, a sort of floating, drifting existence.
  Is democracy punishing us for playing tricks with it? We pretend, and tell the world, that the Manmohan Singh Government is in power in our (…)

• Identities are Returning with a Vengeance

  11 October 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  “The most heinous and the most cruel crimes which history has recorded have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.” So said Mahatma Gandhi in 1921 in an address to the Congress party at Ahmedabad. Yet the religion-based parties have played havoc with the sentiments and aspirations of the people in the country. In the name of improving man’s character and convictions the parties have indulged in such acts which have fanned fundamentalism and ultimately (…)

• The Kinship of Impunity

  11 October 2012, by Mukul Dube

  A Supreme Court decision of September 26, 2012 was reported in the newspapers in a manner that suggested wishful thinking. Headlines are necessarily abbreviated, and those in this instance said that the SC had sent a message to “the police” about branding people on the basis of religion. The message, in fact, was specifically to the Gujarat Police: “District Superintendent of Police and Inspector General of Police and all others entrusted with the task of operating the law must not do (…)

• The Dark Side of India’s ‘Growth’ Narrative

  11 October 2012

  BOOK REVIEW by Debraj Bhattacharya
  Alternative Economic Survey, India 2011, Economic Growth and Development in India: Deepening Divergence; Yuva Samvad Prakashan, New Delhi; 2012; Rs 225.
  This volume contains several essays by a distinguished group scholars affiliated to the Indian Political Economy Association on the negative aspects of the Indian political economy since the ‘liberalisation’ of the economy in the early nineties. In a way the volume is not just an Economic Survey for (…)

• Cost and Benefit of Russia’s Entry into WTO

  11 October 2012

  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  In the third week of August 2012 the World Trade Organisation (WTO) admitted Russia as its 156th member. In fact the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, had added another feather on his cap as the leader of Great Russia by putting his signature on July 19, 2012 on the agreement, ratified by the State Parliament (Duma) on July 10, for its accession to the WTO and thus ending Russia’s ordeal of waiting for this event for about 19 years. By joining this economic (…)

• Disruption of Parliament: Threat to Democracy

  11 October 2012, by Anil Rajimwale

  Recent times have witnessed a strange and disturbing phenomenon in the Indian parlia-mentary system, that of continued disruption and disturbance of the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament. Every right-thinking person will be highly disturbed by this tendency, as is clear also from several comments in the recent issues of Mainstream. Virtually no business was transacted in the current session of Parliament. Every time the Houses met to consider something or the other, they were (…)

• The Undemocratic Politics of Disruptions

  11 October 2012, by Amna Mirza

  As the monsoon session of Parliament comes to a close, a raging sense of democratic paralysis engulfs our democratic polity. The Parliament of India is a supreme body as a deliberative forum which represents the issues and concerns of the people of India at the apex level. This understanding of our legislature is put under a dark shadow when one views the recent washout of the monsoon session of Parliament.
  The current monsoon session was stalled due to the Opposition’s strategy to (…)