Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Trauma of Former Terror Accused Set Free by Law Courts

  11 October 2012, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  More of those dark realities stumbling out from Modi administered Gujarat. Those encoun-ters and mass murders and detentions…the sheer brutality hits. And one is left wondering the impact of this, on generations to come. For riots and communal violence not just kill forms but dent psyches. Affecting hundreds and thousands. Some amongst us are not sitting as mere spectators. Perhaps, they have been seeing and sensing these build-ups for far too long and have begun to question and (…)

• Maharashtra Crisis in National Politics

  2 October 2012, by SC

  While the UPA Government’s Congress leadership, notably PM Manmohan Singh, remains firm on going ahead with his reforms agenda unveiled on September 14 with the decision to allow 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail, the Congress-NCP ruling coalition in Maharashtra has suffered a jolt with Deputy CM and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar’s dramatic resignation on September 25. This has doubtless put State CM Prithviraj Chavan (who has all along stood out for his honesty, integrity and probity in (…)

• FDI in Retail: A Low-down on the Falsehood over an Exclusionary Policy

  2 October 2012, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing have been deployed to make India (…)

• Beyond Coalgate: End of Political Authority

  2 October 2012, by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

  A news item in The Times of India on August 23 had the heading: ‘Court says commercial activity seems to top Centre’s priorities’. The item was on tourism in tiger reserves.
  It was published six days after the same paper had carried another headline for its lead news item, a fascinating one for a banal piece of news. It read: ‘CAG estimates: Our likely loss Rs 38,00,00,00,00,000’. Somewhere coal blocks, somewhere land, somewhere something else had been gifted to industries for a song. This (…)

• Dangers at Kudankulam

  2 October 2012, by S G Vombatkere

  The dangers present at Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and surrounding areas are several, but they can be separated into two categories, namely, dangers as seen by government and as seen by people. This is not to imply that government is not legitimate, because it has been elected by the people. But from what follows it is apparent that the government is not for the people.
  Dangers as seen by Government
  The government appears to perceive that the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KKNPP) is in (…)

• India-Pakistan: We Could Have Gone Farther

  2 October 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  When Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar suggests that they are willing to view Kashmir from “another angle” to tackle the thorniest problem and Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna changes the subject, it means that Islamabad has overcome pressures from within. Of course, Foreign Minister Khar’s remark is primarily meant to reopen the problem which remains frozen. Yet the mere suggestion of “another angle” indicates a new confidence that the tottering Asif Ali Zardari Government has (…)

• Police and Communal Violence

  2 October 2012

  by Asghar Ali Engineer
  It seems quite a stale topic as we know how the police behaves during communal distur-bances or even before and after that. Recently the Prime Minister too, during his inaugural address to a one-day conference of Directors General and Inspectors General of Police along with intelligence officers in New Delhi, expressed serious concern about increasing incidents of communal violence in the country. When the Prime Minister of the country expresses concern and draws (…)

• Men, Machines and Mahatma

  2 October 2012, by Upasana Pandey

  [On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s one hundred and fortythird birth anniversary on October 2, 2012, we are carrying the following article and reproducing N.C.’s piece that appeared in Mainstream (October 1, 1994) and an article by Mohit Sen that was published in this journal’s Gandhi birth centenary issue]
  (October 4, 1969).
  Machines have always been an essential instrument of human life. It is almost impossible for men to imagine life without an active presence of machines. Whatever (…)

• Relevance of Gandhiji’s Message Today

  2 October 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  On October 2 this year India is celebrating the hundred and twentyfifth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The Government of India has set up a special committee studded with VIPs of different denominations and is chalking out an extensive programme of functions which will spread over a whole year. The Congress party is holding a meeting of its highest organ, the Working Committee, the very same week at Belgaum, at the border of Karnataka and Maharashtra—this again (…)

• Tolstoy, Gandhi and the Peasant

  2 October 2012, by Mohit Sen

  The author, a distinguished Marxist ideologue, was a CPI leader about whom Jawaharlal Nehru had written that he was a Communist with a nationalist vision. He passed away in May 2003. This article, which is being reproduced from Mainstream’s Gandhi birth centenary issue that appeared on October 4, 1969, was actually a paper he presented at a seminar on “Gandhi and the West” orgainsed by the University of Mysore in 1969.
  The question of ideological indebtedness is always tricky. Much more so (…)