Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Indo-Burma Relations: A Historical Overview

  8 June 2012

  What Matters the Most: Democracy or Security?
  by Sampa Kundu
  In the wake of the recent developments in Burma and PM Manmohan Singh’s latest visit to that country the following article is being published.
  I. Introduction
  India, the largest country in South Asia, is often being criticised for its policy of engagement with Myanmar. The question is: why does a democratic country like India keep itself engaged with the military backed civilian government of Myanmar where the people have (…)

• NATO’s Legitimacy Crisis

  8 June 2012, by Ninan Koshy

  Every NATO Summit is an exercise in its quest for legitimacy. The Chicago Summit was no exception except that the legitimacy crisis has deepened with the debacle in Afghanistan. It was the biggest meeting of the alliance ever organised, with more than sixty countries and organisations represented there. Staged in the home town of President Obama, it was meant to declare the exit from Afghanistan—as if it were an achievement—and to boost the Presi-dent’s geopolitical leadership, both messages (…)

• Odisha Politics: Who is this Uncle Never Failing to Win Over the People through Vote Power?

  8 June 2012

  by An Observer
  The following article reached us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. It is being published now when the Uncle (Pyari Mohan Mohapatra) has shot into national prominence for having reportedly designed a revolt in the ruling BJD in Odisha that he later denied.
  Who is this Uncle in Odisha politics? Controlling the organisation, internal workings and dynamics of the BJD party? Guiding the party supremo Naveen Patnaik? And architec-ting (…)

• Allround Anger at Steepest Petrol Price Hike

  28 May 2012, by SC

  A day after the ruling UPA Government at the Centre marked the third anniversary of its second stint under the Prime Ministership of Dr Manmohan Singh and barely 24 hours following the end of Parliament’s Budget session, the middle class has been dealt a severe blow by the steepest-ever increase in the price of petrol at one go.
  The government representatives are claiming that this was done by the oil marketing companies (OMCs) since the petrol price was decontrolled two years ago in June (…)

• FDI in Multi-Retail is Anti-Aam Admi

  28 May 2012, by Shyam Chand

  Sam Walton, who created the largest and most powerful retail marketing organisation, died in 1992 as the richest man in America. Now his successors are just behind Bill Gates.
  Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh in their report, ‘The Top 200: The Rise of Global Corporate Power’, issued by the Institute of Policy Studies, Washington D.C., September 25, 1996, wrote: “The annual sales of the Wal-Mart made its internal economy larger than the economy of 161 of the world’s countries— including (…)

• Words that Endure

  28 May 2012

  On the occasion of Jawaharlal Nehru’s fortyeighth death anniversary on May 27, 2012, we remember the first PM of independent India by publishing the following excerpts from his writings and speeches. We are also reproducing the Editor’s Notebook that N.C. wrote on May 27, 1976 (it was carried in Mainstream, May 29, 1976) at the height of the Emergency, and a few articles and speeches by noted personalities published in this journal following Nehru’s demise.
  Jawaharlal cannot become a (…)

• Do We Need Nehru Today?

  28 May 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Twelve years ago Jawaharlal Nehru died is harness on May 27. Inevitably, much has changed in these twelve years among his people and in the humanity at large. He was not the man who would have preferred the status quo to change; and if the landscape and the skyline of his country have changed—at places beyond recognition—Nehru, had he been alive, would have tried to understand them, accelerate the process of change.
  What we who belong to the generations after him (…)

• Maker of Our History

  28 May 2012, by Hiren Mukerjee

  It is an apparently cruel but basically comforting thought that in this world of ours nobody, howsoever cherished, continues to be missed, and life flows on with a resilience all its own, not even needing to mock at death which hurts sorely, but time heals the damage. There are however some hurts perhaps which remain congealed in the heart’s interstices. Souffrir passé; avoir souffert ne passé jamais. Jawaharlal Nehru died twelve years ago. The news came life a bolt from the blue, for though (…)

• Nehru Observed

  28 May 2012, by H Y Sharada Prasad

  Is their long history, the Indian people have had two great love affairs. One was with Krishna of legend. The other was with a flesh-and-blood man of our own times, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru knew how much he had received. He wrote about it in his will and testament. To deserve what he got, he gave abundantly. He wanted to be remembered as a “man who with all his mind and heart, loved India and the Indian people”.
  Half of the people of India today have no personal experience of this (…)

• India without Nehru

  28 May 2012

  by DEV DUTT
  On that quiet, drowsy, white May afternoon, Nature broke down into paroxysms of fury and the Heart of India convulsed with sorrow.
  Then, there was a pause—a short pause in the affairs of men in India, nay even the world—when the ashes of the departed leader were scattered over the soils and the waters of India amidst warm eulogies couched in soft accents.
  Finally, Time and Life recovered, and pressed forward again. Symbols of bereavement began to gradually disappear. The (…)