Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Uphold JPC’s Credibility

  12 June 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The Joint Parliamentary Committee probing into the securities seam has inevitably to extend its protracted labours. The star character in the securities scandal, Harshad Mehta, having gone back on his previous position and publicly levelled a serious allegation of having paid the Prime Minister Rs 1 crore and have secured benefits in consequence, there was no escape for the JPC from brushing aside this latest development.
  What has been entrusted to the JPC by (…)

• The Federal Issues in Indian Polity

  12 June 2012, by P R Dubhashi

  Discord on NCTC
  The federal issues in the Indian polity have come to the fore in recent times. They came up prominently when the proposal of the Union Home Ministry to set up a National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) was placed before the meeting of Chief Ministers convened by the Union Home Minster. Several Chief Ministers opposed the proposal tooth and nail. The Chief Ministers included not only the Chief Ministers of the States where the BJP, the main Opposition party at the Centre, is (…)

• Our Common Future from Durban Climate Change Conference

  12 June 2012

  by ARCHITESH PANDA This article was written and sent to us soon after the Durban Climate Change Confrence last January but could not be used ealier. It is now being published on the occasion of the World Environment Day (June 5).
  Introduction
  After much debate, fight, extra days of negotiation, the Seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP 17) of the United Nations Framework Con-vention on Climate Change (UNFCC), concluded in Durban on January 10, 2012. The results have received mixed (…)

• Union Budget 2012 - 13 : A Spurious Budget

  11 June 2012, by A V V S K Rao

  ‘From Birth to Death, our Lives are affected in countless ways by the Activities of Government.’ Stiglitz, Joseph E. (Nobel Laureate)
  Prologue
  The Union Budget for 2012-13 aims at addressing two primary concerns—the economic slowdown and unsatisfactory state of government finances. However, the means it employs are so cautious, and even contradictory, that the chances of success appear remote.
  The Finance Minister kept in the people’s pocket an estimated Rs 4500 crores by a net cut in (…)

• Bringing Peace to Kashmir

  11 June 2012, by N V K Murthy

  The most tragic common heritage of India and Pakistan is a memory of the massacre of thousands of Muslims and Hindus in the two countries following the partition of the subcon-tinent. This is not to find fault with the leaders of the two countries for wanting or agreeing to the partition of the subcontinent of India into two countries before the colonial power, the British empire, relinquished its rule. No doubt they did it with the best of intentions thinking that this would be the ideal (…)

• Asia - Pacific Poetry First Festival in Vietnam

  11 June 2012

  by BIPLAB MAJEE
  I never even thought in my dreams that I would visit Vietnam some day. In the seventies, when we were young, we organised rallies in support of Vietnam and used to chant slogans—‘Tomar nam Amar nam Vietnam Vietnam—Thy name my name is Vietnam Vietnam’. Both Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh were popular names in Bengal in those days. India being a non-aligned country supported Vietnam against the imperialist aggression of the USA.
  On November 5, 2011 Gitesh Sharma, the eminent Hindi (…)

• Wariness and Hope in UP

  11 June 2012

  by ATUL KUMAR THAKUR
  Neither Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian search for “maximum happiness” in a democracy, nor the Marxists’ approach for classless society within a complete socialistic state fits well to idealise the Samajwadi Party’s sudden, emphatic and unpre-cedented rise in the recently held UP Assembly election. Instead Machiavellian aspirations seem more closely working behind the modestly deserving transfer of the baton to what was once an unholy entity and is now a slightly better (…)

• China Today and Tomorrow

  11 June 2012

  REMEMBERING TIANANMEN MASSACRE, JUNE 4, 1989 On the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre this week, we are reproducing excerpts from the ‘Political Notebook’ by the Mainstream editor (who was then its associate editor) that appeared in this journal’s June 10, 1989 issue.
  Figures have lost all meaning in the conditions prevailing in the People’s Republic of China today. The fact is that what began in the early hours of June 4, 1989 at Tiananmen Square in the heart of China’s capital, (…)

• The Question of Democracy

  8 June 2012, by SC

  As we go to press there have been widespread mass protests across the country today against the steepest ever petrol price hike effected last week. The BJP called a Bharat bandh over the issue. The Left parties organised their own demonstrations against the price hike in different places including the Capital and their activists also courted arrest while registering their protest.
  What is striking, however, is the Congress leaders themselves conveying their opposition to the move. (…)

• Parliament’s First Years were Glorious, Then the Warnings Came True

  8 June 2012, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Parliament’s shastipoorti passed off with no more than token celebrations—daylong ses-sions, a commemorative stamp and coin, some classical music, and that was it. It is no small achievement that democracy has survived in reasonable strength in our feudal and fractured society. But the threats we face are not small either which perhaps made the muted celebrations more appropriate. After all, how exuberant can we get when the honourable Members of Parliament have to compete with (…)