Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Requiem for My Friend Kamala Prasad

  2 September 2011, by Muchkund Dubey

  Kamala Prasad, an outstanding civil servant of post-independent India, a formidable intellect, a prolific writer on current affairs and a perfect gentleman, passed away in Delhi on August 9, 2011. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1957 and retired as the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bihar in 1992. In addition to going through all the rungs of the Service, he was primarily involved in policy-making on development issues at the highest administrative level. He was the (…)

• The Anna Factor

  2 September 2011, by Devaki Jain

  Beginning as it did with not only deep skepticism about the legitimacy of the crowds —starting with aspersions that this was a middle-class urban community, triggered and extra-polated by the media, especially TV—the comments of the gatherings in Delhi in particular and elsewhere have begun to see the ‘crowds’ differently. From Left to Right, from journalists to commentators there is an acknowledgement that the crowds have all classes as well as all sects and are truly gripped by the (…)

• An Ill-conceived Essay

  2 September 2011

  COMMUNICATION
  The article “Duragraha in the name of Satygraha: A Gandhian Perspective” by Alok Bajpai, published in the July 29 issue of Mainstream, is utterly misconceived. It itself seeks to kill the Gandhian spirit. By declaring the Parliament supreme, over the voice of the people’s movement supported by virtually all cross-sections of the society across the country, it forgot the Gandhian dictum that representational democracy (which includes both parliamentary and presidential forms (…)

• Some Aspects of the Vastanvi Episode in Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband

  2 September 2011, by Syed Shahabuddin

  The mass media has highlighted the decision of the Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband, to terminate the recent appointment of Maulana G.M. Vastanvi as Mohtamin (Rector) and focused on the Muslim Indian’s continuing rejection of Narendra Modi, the mastermind of the Gujarat Genocide of 2002.
  The economic development of Gujarat under Modi is totally irrelevant to the Muslim Gujaratis who have re-built their shattered lives to the extent possible since the Genocide of 2002 with their own efforts without (…)

• Combating Corruption — The Ethical Dimension

  2 September 2011, by B P Mathur

  Just as it is impossible not to taste honey or poison that one may find at the tip of one’s tongue, so it is impossible for one dealing with government funds not to taste, at least a little bit, of the King’s wealth.
  Just as it is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it, so it is impossible to find out when government servants in charge of undertakings misappropriate money. —Kautilya: Arthshastra
  The only definition that can be given of morality is this: That which (…)

• Into That Heaven Of Freedom From Corruption, Let My Country Awake

  2 September 2011, by S G Vombatkere

  Over the past decades successive Union governments of various political hues have not even gotten to the stage of tabling a Lokpal Bill, and combined with a rash of monumental scams in the past couple of years, it has pushed the corruption issue on to the front page.
  The nation is agog with the face-off between what has come to be known as “Team Anna” led by Anna Hazare and the Congress-led UPA Union government on the subject of corruption, focussed as it is on the Jan Lokpal Bill (…)

• Congress does a Trick, BJP stages a Farce — and Corruption is Assured a Free Run

  2 September 2011, by T J S George

  It is now clear beyond all doubt: the Congress and the BJP are equally uninterested in fighting corruption.
  Actually both are interested in continuing it because both are beneficiaries of corruption. All talk about ending corruption and punishing the corrupt is just talk, meant to fool the public.
  The Congress showed its anti-anti-corruption state of mind by subverting the public demand for an effective Lokpal Bill and presenting a draft that was only slightly different from (…)

• August 1991 Coup Against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev : Analysis and Editorials by Nikhil Chakravartty

  2 September 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  On August 19 this year was observed the twentieth anniversary of the coup against the then Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, by the hardliners in the Soviet Communist Party, an event that engendered a massive popular backlash in Russia and the entire USSR and expedited the demise of first the CPSU and then the Soviet Union itself, notwithstanding the fact that due to remarkable mass resistance the coup failed by (…)

• August 19-21, 1991: Three Days that Changed the Course of World History in 20th Century

  2 September 2011, by Arun Mohanty

  Few other events of the 20th century have changed the course of world history so abruptly as the so-called coup of August 1991 in Moscow that changed the geopolitics of the modern world so profoundly and so quickly. Without going into the details of the coup attempt it can definitely be said that the so-called plot no doubt accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Union; brought about the end of the Cold War; and changed the global correlation of forces abruptly and unexpectedly. The (…)

• Post-Kan Scenarios in Japanese Politics

  2 September 2011, by Rajaram Panda

  Keeping his words to resign (announced two months ago), Japan’s Prime Minister Kan Naito is expected to resign by the end of August 2011 after the Diet passes two bills that he had set as conditions for his leaving office. This will set the stage for Japan’s sixth Prime Minister to take office in five years. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and Opposition combine of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Komeito agreed on August 9 to pass the legislation that would allow for (…)