Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• West Bengal At Crossroads

  24 May 2011

  COMMUNICATION
  Against the background of the coming Assembly elections in West Bengal and keeping the CPM in view, Prof Patnaik has provided us a few positive attributes of the Left (“Why the Left Matters”, Mainstream, March 25, 2011, p. 31). Whatever may be the position elsewhere in India, in WB the Left does not deserve these attributes.
  The CPM (WB) at the grassroot level is highly sectarian in every sphere, follows a policy of “we” and “they”, and actively pursues an agenda of (…)

• L(D)F’s Irrevocable Tragedy in the Assembly Elections!

  24 May 2011, by Sharad Patil

  Unilinear Marxism is in world crisis. Jyoti Basu, the CPI-M’s longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal, said before his death that ‘socialism is not practicable’. The Left (Democratic) Fronts of Kerala and West Bengal can no longer lay claim to the titles of Socialist or Communist. That is why irrevocable tragedies wait for both these Fronts in the coming Assembly elections. Disillusionment will seize their sincere cadres in the post-election period and they will strive to seek the (…)

• CPM in West Bengal: A Moment of Truth

  24 May 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It’s time to pause and ponder for the CPI-M in West Bengal. I would not use the hackneyed cliché of “self-criticism”—much abused in Communist circles. It has been shown up as a means to force a sort of confession in Catholic terms. What’s wanted is self-introspection. Let the leaders of the Left, particularly the wise and the perceptive, think over what’s happening and how to get back to the road to a purposeful future.
  I happened to be in Calcutta on the day of the Congress-I called (…)

• Others take care of their People, India takes care of Lobbies

  24 May 2011, by T J S George

  The endosulfan controversy is typical of India, of Indian politics, of Indian corruption, of Indian morality. There were 173 countries in the Stockholm Convention that debated whether or not there should be a global ban on this notorious pesticide. Of these 125 had banned it outright. All 47 of the remaining 48 sat on the fence and generally kept quiet. Only one argued vehemently on behalf of endosulfan. That one-in-the-world nation was India.
  India was further isolated by the silliness (…)

• Defining Moment in the War on Terror

  14 May 2011, by SC

  Osama bin Laden is no more. The Al-Qaeda supremo, regarded as the world’s most dreaded terrorist, was shot dead by US forces in the early hours of May 2, 2011 at a spacious building in a massive compound, fortified with high walls and barbed wires, in Abbottabad (about 60 km north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad), a city where the Kakul Military Academy is located. This has stunned both the Pakistani establishment and people at large—and the general impression of well-informed experts and (…)

• Revoke the Illegal Clearance to the POSCO Project

  14 May 2011

  DEMAND AT PRESS CONFERENCE IN NEW DELHI
  A press conference was held in New Delhi on May 4, 2011 to protest against the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest’s “final clearance” to the POSCO project in Odisha. The following is the press release issued by the POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity (PPS-Delhi) in association with NFFPFW, CSD, NAPM, INSAF, and others at the press conference.
  The ‘final forest clearance’ by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to the controversial POSCO (…)

• West Bengal: Land, Money and the Marxists in New Town

  14 May 2011

  by Sanjeeb Mukherjee
  Most governments in India are regularly in the news for the wrong reasons. Corruption, murder, rape and mayhem have become routine pastimes of Ministers and their men. It has to be recognised that the Left Government in West Bengal has a much brighter image; no major scam has embarrassed it. Though charges have been levelled against some Ministers and rumours are afloat, the media and the Opposition as well as whistleblowers and intellectuals have failed to properly (…)

• The Legacy for Tomorrow

  14 May 2011

  Lenin once asked a group of Soviet students as to whom they regarded as the greatest literary figure of Russia. “Mayakovsky,” they replied. “Yes, but what about Pushkin?” asked Lenin, and added, “Could there have been a Mayakovsky without a Pushkin?” A hundred years from today the people would speak of Tagore in the same way and with more truth. At the moment we are too near to his personality to fully appraise its greatness. You cannot size up a Titan when you stand next to him. Tagore (…)

• Vignettes from Tagore

  14 May 2011

  On the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, we present here some vignettes from his writings providing an insight to his wandering spirit. These vignettes appeared in Mainstream (May 4, 1963).
  I was one day summoned upstairs to my father. How would I like to go with him to the Himalayas, I was asked. Away from the Bengal Academy and off to the Himalayas?
  Our first halt was to be for a few days at Bolpur. Satya had been there a short time before with his parents. No (…)

• The Nemesis

  14 May 2011

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE
  Your breathern you have treated with disrespect,
  You have denied them their simple human rights.
  You have made them stand and wait before you,
  And not given them a place in your affection.
  You must share with them all, their ignominy.
  II
  You have made of your neighbour an untouchable,
  You have offended that of God in every man.
  If famine visits your land like the wrath of God,
  You shall have to break your crumbs with the poorest.
  You must share with (…)