Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Chhattisgarh Massacre: State Terror, Human Rights and Naxalites

  15 July 2012, by Ambrose Pinto

  War on Adivasis
  The message of the mass killing in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh, on the night of June 28, 2012 was clear. The security forces, both at the Centre and in the States, have declared a war on the Adivasis. The objective of the war is to tell the Adivasis that they do not have the first right over their fertile land and resources. The state has every right to take over these and do what it desires. The state is the boss and in charge of ‘public interests’ and the people have to be (…)

• Maoists are also Indians

  15 July 2012, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Independent India has been consistent in its approach to the million mutinies that threatened the country’s unity and integrity through the past six decades and more. That pattern is something like this: popular alienation is simply left unaddressed even if the root cause remains no great mystery and is possible to be tackled; sometimes the ruling party willfully exploits the alienation to suit the needs of electoral politics (Khalistan); the wounds inevitably fester over time; and, when the (…)

• Bloodbath at Sarkeguda

  15 July 2012, by Vidya Bhushan Rawat

  It was a night when the innocent Adivasis in village Sarkeguda were busy with the festivities for planting seeds on their land. The festivities are a community affair and a matter of great joy where people dance and celebrate the event. Hence when the villagers of Sarkeguda were planning for their festivities, little did they realise that their homes would turn into their graves with the piercing bullets of the Indian state. The Director General of the Central Reserved Police Force, K. (…)

• India-EU Economic Relations: FTA in the Offing

  15 July 2012, by Bharti Chhibber

  Recently, India and the European Union (EU) concluded another round of negotiations on the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) at Brussels. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht reviewed the progress of the negotiations, which started in June 2007 and are expected to be concluded before the year-end.
  The 27-nation EU is India’s largest trading partner. The bilateral trade between India and the EU has increased from $ 83.46 billion in 2010 to $ 108 billion (…)

• Animal Spirits

  15 July 2012, by Badri Raina

  Between the 1830s and 1850s, the human race, chiefly in Britannia, evolved into animal spirits.
  Darwinism and Industrial Capitalism came together to catapult humankind from lazy ethical medievalisms to the heights of prowess and productivity. All that based on the clear recognition that the only demonstrable impetus behind the dynamics of the material world was the will-to-power of those whom evolution had made fitter to survive than others, both among animals and homo sapiens. (…)

• Odisha: Panchayat Election Results and their Meaning for the Assembly Poll

  15 July 2012, by Bidyut Mohanty

  This article reached us quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  A State, known for having the highest proportion of the poor in the country and a large number of districts under Maoist influence and where many movements are going on against mega-mining projects, has just completed the panchayat elections relatively peacefully. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), under the leadership of Naveen Patnaik, has been ruling Odisha for the last twelve years: it has once (…)

• Panchsheel and After

  15 July 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  It is interesting to find that a fairly high-level of delegates from the government-sponsored Think Tanks in China had interactions with their Indian counterparts recently in New Delhi under the aegis of a seminar devoted to Panchsheel and Global Diplomacy. The event marked the fortieth anniversary of the coining of the Panchsheel, that is, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (June 28, 1954). As a matter of fact, no specific declaration on the five principles (…)

• Guardians of Law turning into Law-breakers

  15 July 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  You deserve to be congratulated for publishing the memorandum submitted by a women’s group to the President of India regarding viola-tion of the rights of Soni Sori (Mainstream, May 18-24) and conferment of President’s gallantry award on SP Ankit Garg. This is not an isolated case but one in the long series of humiliation of Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims. The memorandum rightly points out that “if ignored and left unpunished, it sets dangerous precedents for the subversion of (…)

• Why a Hindutvavadi Should Not be the Prime Minister of India

  15 July 2012, by Shamsul Islam

  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsangh-chalak, Shri Mohan Bhagwat-ji,
  Namaskar.
  I was not surprised to read your comments in newspapers that it was not necessary to be a secular person to occupy the office of the Prime Minister in Democratic-Secular India. As per the press reports, you wondered why a Hindutvavadi could not become the PM of India. I am sure you understand better than me that being a Hindutvavadi is not the same as professing Hindu religion. Our national leaders—like Mahatma (…)

• Ideas, History as Human Agency

  15 July 2012, by Uttam Sen

  Communications
  The author has gone through the grind of journalism from production and reporting to leader writing. This two-part article is an endeavour to see the world through the prism of the average person like himself.
  When the father-figures of the government and allied institutions fall short of providing for the common man, he has to fend for himself. Large organisational structures are characteristi-cally top-heavy and centralised and once the ways of the world assert (…)