Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Church and Education in Kerala

  27 February 2012, by V Mathew Kurian

  I. Introduction
  Education is critically important to social development. According to Amartya Sen, it helps in building up human capabilities. Educational attainment is one of the main criteria in indexing human development. Among Indian States, Kerala stands at the top in the Human Develop-ment Index. From a historical perspective, the unique contributions of Churches towards this, particularly in the domains of education and health, are indisputable.
  Though education as a ‘merit good’ (…)

• New Questions in Naya Bihar: The Cry of Vernacular Academics

  27 February 2012, by Dev N Pathak

  “I wonder whether Nitish Kumar is an offshoot of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement; he seems to have emerged from Laloo Yadav’s movement,” said Prof Nawal Kishor Chaudhury, with a wink of sarcasm, in an informal conver-sation during a seminar in Saharsa (Bihar). Prof Chaudhury, an economist of eminence, affiliated with Patna University, had to disclose another barbed wit, that he turned down the offer of ascending to the position of Vice-Chancellor of one of the old universities in Bihar. For, (…)

• Electoral Mandate, Fake Encounters and Rule of Law

  27 February 2012

  by R.B. SREEKUMAR
  The Apex Court order (January 25, 2012) entrusting the inquiry to a retired Supreme Court judge, Justice M.B. Shah, of all 21 extra-judicial killings by the Gujarat Police from October 2002 to December 2006, is welcomed by all law-abiding citizens. This has confirmed the representation of the human rights activists that the Narendra Modi Government, since the days of the anti-minority carnage following the gruesome killing of 59 Hindus on February 27, 2002 in a train fire (…)

• Analysing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota

  27 February 2012, by Khalid Anis Ansari

  I
  The recent announcement of a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for backward sections within minorities in the overall Central OBC quota by the UPA Government on December 22, 2011 in the wake of elections in five States, including the crucial State of Uttar Pradesh, has drawn in a number of reactions, some valid and others not.
  Even though the media has often presented the sub-quota as one for the minorities, or in extreme cases a quota for Muslims by default, thereby providing wind to the wings (…)

• Saramago’s Candid Comments

  27 February 2012, by Girish Mishra

  It is quite often said in India that a person loses his enthusiasm and vigour and the capacity to struggle against odds and acts of injustice as he becomes older. This, however, never applied to the Portuguese literary giant, Jose Saramago. Born in a poor landless family on November 16, 1922, he actively participated in struggles against dictatorship and oppression in his own country and lent his voice to resistance against injustice wherever he saw it. He never, for once, wavered till his (…)

• Russia Muscles Up: Challenges We Must Rise To Face

  27 February 2012

  by VLADIMIR PUTIN
  (On March 4 the presidential election is to take place in Russia. PM Vladimir Putin is again in the fray as he wants to become the President once more. The alleged rigging by the authorities in the recent Russian parliamentary elections has sparked off massive public protests in the capital. Moscow and elsewhere in the country and Putin has become the target of attack because of a large section of the people’s opposition to his running for the top post testifying to the (…)

• Indira Gandhi’s Priorities

  27 February 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  A touch of shameless audacity marks the character of politicians when they are sustained by hardly any sense of responsibility towards the people whom they are supposed to represent. Democracy has certainly its moments of glory but there is no dearth of its dishonour at the hands of bankrupt politicians who sometimes hold it to ransom.
  This could be seen in the most blatant form in the responses and reactions to the Indira Government’s order on February 17 to (…)

• On Taslima, Infant Mortality, Farmers’ Suicides

  27 February 2012, by Amitava Mukherjee

  WEST BENGAL NOTEBOOK
  Even the worst critics of Mamata Banerjee will admit that the West Bengal Chief Minister has street wisdom. This became evident recently over the release of Taslima Nasreen’s latest book in the just concluded Kolkata Book Fair. An orga-nisation of the minority community threatened demonstrations inside the Book Fair venue if any function was allowed in the auditorium for the book release. The news reached Mamata right on time. She did not exhibit any sign of panic or (…)

• Choice before South Block

  19 February 2012, by SC

  While the UP election scene has hotted up with AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi publicly tearing a piece of paper purported to be a list of promises made by the BSP and SP before the State’s electorate, and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav candidly declaring his party’s readiness for an alliance with the Congress to “keep the communal forces out” of power only to categorically deny it shortly and clarify that all he meant was the Congress-SP understanding at the Centre and not in the State, (…)

• They

  19 February 2012

  February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering those martyrs on the sixtieth anniversary of that movement and the fiftieth anniversary of Bangladesh’s liberation, we are carrying the following poem by a distinguished (…)