Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• A Blueprint for the Revival and Expansion of the Left Movement

  25 October 2011, by Syed Shahabuddin

  The Indian polity needs the Left in order not only to provide an alternative to the Right, represented by the BJP and the Congress, but to stop close cooperation between the two which has of late seen new dimensions of collaboration on several political, economic and social issues. Who knows they may eventually form a coalition around a common social constituency and support of the market economy?
  Political Status
  IN the General Election 2009, the Left representation was reduced. In the (…)

• Super Radicals and Anna Hazare

  25 October 2011, by D.R. Chaudhry

  This refers to an article “The Neoliberal Revolution” by Anand Teltumbde (Mainstream, September 17, 2011) in which he has lampooned the Hazare movement against corruption as a well-crafted stratagem in counter-revolution. The article gives the impression that the Indian revolution was on march and about to knock at the portals of Red Fort when a naïve and befuddled Gandhian put a halt to it and thus played a treacherous role for the toiling masses of India. The Anna team’s movement against (…)

• Anna’s Anti-Congressism

  25 October 2011

  by A.K. VERMA
  The recent strategy of team Anna to take the Congress by the horns in the Hisar Lok Sabha by-poll took the party completely by surprise and bewilderment. This is evident from the fact that the Congress chose to over-react to Anna’s anti-Congressism. From Team Anna’s perspective, the move was designed to test the possible outcome of the civil society taking on the political society on corruption and Jan Lokpal in the larger arena of political contestations in five States next (…)

• Is Anna Hazare an Agent of the Right-wing?

  25 October 2011, by Ambrose Pinto

  Anna Hazare has given a call to the people of Hisar to vote out the Congress from the constituency in the by-election. The only reason for his campaign against the Congress is that the party has not given him in writing that it would back his Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed in the next session of Parliament. The BJP and some other smaller parties have assured their support to Anna in writing. Is Anna justified in asking for letters of support from political parties when a note was provided to (…)

• Parliament and People are Both Supreme

  25 October 2011, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s opinion-piece on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests could as well have been written about the Indian political elites’ visceral reaction to Anna Hazare’s war on corruption. Look at the similarities. Both are manifestations of the popular revulsion against greed—“the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a per cent”, as Krugman writes.
  Obviously, there has been a lot of “police (…)

• Aruna Roy speaks of Keeping Intact RTI Law, explains Approach to Jan Lokpal

  25 October 2011

  NCPRI FOUNDER MEMBER’S INTERVIEW TO PAMELA PHILIPOSE
  ‘Let’s not forget that when we talk of corruption, we are also looking at huge amounts of corruption outside the government today,’ says Aruna Roy. These are busy days for Aruna Roy, 65, founder member of the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), with the Jan Lokpal and the need to check corruption emerging as one of the big concerns before India today. The woman, (…)

• Lest We Forget

  25 October 2011

  Several noted personalities in different fields of activity have recently departed from our midst.
  GHAZAL’S golden voice was stilled when Jagjit Singh, 70, passed away on October 10 in Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital where he was admitted on September 18 after suffering a brain haemorrhage; PM Manmohan Singh, in his tribute, aptly pointed out that Jagjit Singh, “by making ghazals accessible to everyone, …… gave joy and pleasure to millions of music lovers in India and abroad”. Founder of Apple (…)

• On the fortyninth anniversary of the China India war of 1962

  25 October 2011

  [October 20 this year marks the fortyninth anniversary of the Chinese aggression on India. On this occasion we are carrying two pieces of N.C. on the subject—the first is from his ‘New Delhi Skyline’ published in Mainstream seven days after the invasion, and the second was written at the time of the thirtieth anniversary of the military attack in 1992.]
  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  What Invasion has Shown Up.
  Need for World Publicity
  A fresh appraisal of values has overtaken New Delhi with (…)

• Poverty of the Debate on Poverty

  25 October 2011, by Bharat Dogra

  It is good that poverty has been widely discussed recently in India, but a careful look at the context of most of this discussion would reveal that this debate has been overwhelmingly devoted to norms on the basis of which poverty may be defined or the poor may be classified.
  In a language so familiar to India’s poverty discourse, we may say that the debate has been almost obsessed with the APL-BPL issue (the classification of people between ‘above the poverty line’ and ‘below the poverty (…)

• What’s Going On? There’s Need to End this Dangerous Drift to Governmentlessness

  25 October 2011, by T J S George

  The irony is so stark that it exposes the sham of it all. The criminals who attacked a corruption-fighting lawyer (Prashant Bhushan) in his chamber called themselves the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena. Those who gathered to see the attackers in a court were assaulted by thugs who called themselves the Sri Ram Sene. Bhagat Singh was a patriot whose writings showed great discretion and judgment and whose memory is honoured by all sections of people. Sri Ram is the most revered of all divinities in (…)