Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Open Letter to the President, PM, Ministers

  19 February 2012, by S G Vombatkere

  URGENT APPEAL TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, DEFEND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS, FREE SONI SORI AND LINGARAM KODOPI
  Respected President, Prime Minister and Ministers,
  Every year on January 26, we celebrate the Constitution of India.1 Every January 30, we remember the martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to freedom. However, for the vast majority of the people of India, even the most basic of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution —the right to life and personal liberty and due legal (…)

• An Agenda for Afghan Peace Talks

  19 February 2012, by M K Bhadrakumar

  I first met the Hazara leader, Mohammad Mohaqiq, in 1997 while serving in Tashkent. He sent word through an intermediary seeking a meeting. Mohaqiq journeyed across the Amu Darya and came over to the ambassador’s residence in Tashkent and we spent an evening over a meal talking for several hours and getting to know each other.
  Mohaqiq made great impression on me as a Mujahideen commander in comparison with other jihadi leaders I had met—Ahmed Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Sibghatullah (…)

• Political Empowerment of Telangana

  19 February 2012, by C.H. Hanumantha Rao

  KEY LESSON FROM ENCOURAGING PERFORMANCE OF SMALLER STATES
  1. Introduction
  Achieving economic growth with social justice has always been the foremost objective of economic planning in India since independence. Although the achievements in this respect have been substantial, the growth achieved was much slower than planned and reduction of poverty was also slow. It was after the launching of economic reforms in the early 1990s that the growth rate of the economy accelerated, but the (…)

• Remembering Delhi Declaration on Non-violent and Non-nuclear World

  19 February 2012, by Arun Mohanty

  Twentyfive years have passed since the signing of the mostly-forgotten Delhi Declaration on Non-violent and Non-nuclear World. The Delhi Declaration on Non-violent and Non-nuclear World was truly a unique document that has been consigned to history quite unwisely at a time when it is most required. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had put their signatures on this significant document on November 27, 1986 at Delhi. This document was unique and (…)

• India-Pakistan: Unlocking the Status Quo

  19 February 2012

  by ALI AHMED
  India is watching with bated breath as Pakistan attempts to ‘normalise’ its civil-military relations. For India there is considerable benefit in the outcome going a certain way. It looks forward to a dividend in the outbreak of democratic peace. Resolving Kashmir amicably would be a positive fallout. The incentives towards this end, of expanding trade ties, have been on offer for long. The Lahore peace initiative was a fore-runner. Whether Pakistan bites is not for India to (…)

• Goa — The Liberators and the Lesson

  19 February 2012, by Ajoy Ghosh

  On February 20 this year falls the 103rd birth anniversary of Ajoy Ghosh, the fourth General Secretary of the CPI and the last of the undivided Communist Party (October 1950-January 1962). While remembering him we reproduce, with due acknowledgement, the following article he wrote in New Age, the CPI organ, after the liberation of Goa from Portuguese colonial rule at the fag end of 1961. This article appeared on January 7, 1962 less than a week before Ajay’s tragic demise on January 13. This (…)

• Commendable Analysis of Present Crisis in World Capitalism

  19 February 2012

  BOOK REVIEW
  by BISHWAJIT SEN
  Democratic Revolution for Economic Democracy by U.N. Mishra; New Generation Press, Delhi; Price: Rs 125.
  This is a brief treatise attempting to explain the present crisis in world capitalism. With banks collapsing in the US and retrenched workers demonstrating in several European nations, the time has come for taking stock of the situation. Many issues are involved: How things came to such a pass, and which factors contributed to it? So, the work cannot (…)

• Importance of being the General

  19 February 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Although there is us yet no clear indication as to when the Lok Sabha elections will take place, the electioneering season has already arrived. Both the Opposition and the ruling party have opened their propaganda guns, and in a few weeks, it promises to be a high-pitched election campaign.
  The new element in the election campaign this time—indeed a very disconcerting element—is the ominous emergence of the brass hat in the political arena. The long-range (…)

• Publicise Nurses’ Strike in Kerala

  19 February 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  It has been months since nurses from private hospitals of Kerala are on strike. They are striking for minimum wages and basic facilities in their working place. As you know, in India the private hospital industry is in the hands of religious-corporate leaders which control the mainstream media, which make sure this strike should not get the publicity it deserves. Like Arab Spring the blogs and face-book pages took the initiative to spread the message and it gained momentum in (…)

• Language of Love and Death: Fifty Years of Assam’s Language Movement

  19 February 2012

  by NABANIPA BHATTACHARJEE
  The Beginning of Things
  Of the major issues that informed the culture and politics of post-independence Assam, none (other than the issue of immigration) perhaps acquired the kind of centrality that language did. The post-independence Gopinath Bardoloi-led Congress provincial government, and also sections of the civil society through various organisations such as the Assam Sahitya Sabha and Assam Jatiya Mahasabha took upon themselves the task of construction of (…)