Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On PWA and Fight against Communalism

  4 March 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  Mr Ather Farouqui’s article in the annual issue of Mainstream ‘Indo-Pak Relationship: Companions of Paradoxical Syndrome’ is unique in many ways. He is the first to address the issue of Urdu and its relevance to the worsening relationship between India and Pakistan. Of special interest was his focus on the inactiveness of the Left parties, particularly on the issue of the stasis in the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA), which has become just a forum for socialites, with (…)

• Polluted Politics

  4 March 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The sensational criminal case that has come up in Bombay focussing on an alleged plot to kill Nusli Wadia and implicating in it an Ambani close to Dhirubhai and some of the underworld mafia, has serious political implications which are being lost sight of in the excitement that the case itself has evoked.
  There is the danger of complacency in treating it as just the facet of a long-standing civil war between two corporate giants, Reliance under the Ambanis, and (…)

• Citizens’ Statement against PM’s Malicious Comment on Kudankulam Struggle Who is under the foreign hand?

  4 March 2012

  We strongly deplore the PM’s recent statement that the people’s struggle against Kudankulam nuclear power plant is instigated by foreign agencies and funds. We cannot accept our PM to stoop to such low levels.
  This allegation is a clear hint from him that the Indian people who could think on their own to elect the Congress-led UPA in the last general election, have suddenly lost the capacity to think ‘correctly’ about their safety and energy security. Eminent Indian intellectuals like (…)

• Cities Are Failing Children Warns UNICEF

  4 March 2012

  SOME OF THE GREATEST DISPARITIES EXIST IN URBAN AREAS
  Urbanisation leaves hundreds of millions of children in cities and towns excluded from vital services, UNICEF warns in The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World.
  Greater urbanization is inevitable. In a few years, the report says, the majority of children will grow up in towns or cities rather than in rural areas. Children born in cities already account for 60 per cent of the increase in urban population. (…)

• Challenges before Children Growing Up in Cities

  4 March 2012

  UNICEF REPRESENTATIVE IN INDIA ON GREAT INEQUITIES, OPPORTUNITIES AND DEPRIVATION IN TOWNS AND CITIES
  [The following are excerpts from the speech by Karin Hulshof, the UNICEF Representative in India, at the launch of The State of World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World in New Delhi on February 29, 2012. The document was released by Dr Shanta Sinha, Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.]
  Today, more than fifty per cent of the world’s population (…)

• Dangerous Trend

  4 March 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  Amitava Mukherjee in his “West Bengal Notebook” (Mainstream, February 25, 2012) has gone overboard in showering unnecessary praise on Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal CM, when she should have been roundly criticised for being instrumental in not allowing the formal release of Taslima Nasreen’s latest Bengali book, Nirbasan (Exile), at the Kolkata Book Fair. By doing so she has showed, beyond doubt, that she would capitulate before Muslim fanatics in order to maintain her (…)

• Need for Indo-Russian Partnership in BMD

  4 March 2012

  by T.R. SUBRAMANIAN
  China is rapidly developing its capabilities to launch anti-ballistic and anti-satellite missiles (ABMs and ASMs). This could tilt the regional balance in the not-too-distant future thereby endangering India’s security.
  Against this backdrop it is imperative for New Delhi to enhance its defence potential and thus safeguard the nation from Beijing’s strategic weapons. It should not be taken in by China’s sweet-talk at the diplomatic level no matter what certain (…)

• The Wild Animals of Politics have Sensed that the Day of Reckoning is Here

  4 March 2012, by T J S George

  This week the citizens of India can look at themselves and say: It’s going to be all right. The second freedom struggle—for freedom from corruption—is beginning to show some signs of a satisfactory solution. The rise of public opinion in spontaneous response to Anna Hazare’s campaign was the first sign that our country had the inner strength to stand up to the corrupt. Now the judiciary has helped restore a sense of sobriety and balance to a scene vitiated by wreckless corruption. Not that (…)

• Timely Invervention

  27 February 2012, by SC

  There have been several sordid incidents in recent days. Besides the ‘porngate’ in Karnataka, the rape of a young Anglo-Indian lady in Kolkata (that hogged the headlines because of certain remarks by the West Bengal CM considered to be insensitive) and the unprovoked firing by Italian Navy marines killing two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala have caused widespread concern. Secularists have been dismayed not just due to the return to power of the Shiv Sena in the Brihanmumbai (…)

• How War on Terror triggers Renewed Terror

  27 February 2012, by T J S George

  Caught between anti-corruption hypocrisies and pre-election manipulations, we are failing to notice the gathering clouds of a new kind of terrorism. Many perceptive observers had commented that America’s “war on terror” would in fact inflame terrorism instead of containing it. Is that happening already?
  It is clear that hatred of America has intensified among those who were targeted by the war on terror. In spite of the civilian government, handpicked and installed by the US in Baghdad, (…)