Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Wiping Out The Nehruvian Legacy

  3 May 2011, by Girish Mishra

  Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru’s entry into Indian politics, there have been continuous attacks not only on his ideas and outlook but also on his personal and private life. This campaign still continues even 47 years after his departure from this world. This is because of his outlook and thinking.
  As is obvious from his writings and speeches, despite divisions of caste, religion, language, region, living style and so on, India had been one and its first priority was to liberate itself from (…)

• Cause for Optimism

  25 April 2011, by SC

  The multi-phase elections for the West Bengal Assembly have begun with Trinamul Congress chief and Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee holding massive rallies across the State, especially in South Bengal, whereas Congress President Sonia Gandhi, PM Manmohan Singh have joined Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in launching the election campaign in right earnest appealing to the electorate to vote for the TMC-Congress alliance that is all set to wrest power from the CPM-led Left Front. Even (…)

• Obama’s Audacity of Doom

  25 April 2011, by N A Karim

  It is indeed a strange spectacle of a Nobel Peace Laureate, President Barack Obama, blithely marching through three major warfields—one he inherited from his predecessor, the other inherited, all right, but modified and renewed as his own, and the third one entirely of his own making. True, several Nobel Peace Prize winners had received this coveted world prize with their blood-stained hands while it bypassed the universally acclaimed apostles of peace. This is the irony of the human (…)

• Corruption a Mere Symptom: The Disease is Unbridled Greed

  25 April 2011, by Kobad Ghandy

  This is another article sent by the Maoist leader, Kobad Ghandy, from Tihar Jail No. 3 (where he is currently lodged) for publication in Mainstream.
  The IPL scam, the CWG scam, the 2G spectrum scam, the foodgrain/BPL/NREGA scams, Adarsh housing scam, the Satna land scam, the Citibank scam, the insurance scam, the P.J. Thomas/palmolein scam, the Yediyurappa land scams, the Prasar Bharati scam, Balakrishnan/NHRC chairman scam, the IMA Modi scam—the list is endless and growing by the day. (…)

• The New Trend: A Desire to Own Bhagat Singh | Reflections on a visit to Pakistan II

  25 April 2011, by Kuldip Nayar

  This is the second and last piece written by veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar following his latest visit to Pakistan. The first one appeared in Mainstream (April 16, 2011).
  A surprise awaited us at Lahore as our goodwill mission to Pakistan reached the city after visiting Karachi, Hyderabad and Islamabad. A throng of 300 people was present at Shadman Chowk to pay homage to Bhagat Singh. This is the place where he and his two comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, were hanged 80 years ago in 1931. (…)

• Global Leadership And Global Systemic Issues — Part I | Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Branislav Gosovic

  25 April 2011

  by Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Branislav Gosovic
  [The following is the first part of a lengthy article being published here in three parts. The next two parts will be carried in the succeeding issues of this journal.
  —Editor ]
  1. Preface
  The world is becoming more open, inter-connected, interdependent and complex. This trend, propelled by revolutionary scientific and technological progress and change, will intensify in the decades to come. As the 21st century runs its course, it will (…)

• Caste Census, Commonwealth Games, Scams and Citizens’ Responsibility

  25 April 2011, by K Saradamoni

  I shall not quarrel with anyone who thinks the above title crazy. The pro-caste census lobby did not have an easy time. There are sections among the decision-makers and ordinary people who think that caste is no more a problem in India. But there are others who think that the caste problem remains an unresolved issue. What has the census to do with this? What we understand as census records are the number of people, women, men; married, divorced/widowed, unmarried; children under a certain (…)

• Nuclear Industry’s Cover-Up, Lies And Denial: Beware of the French Nuclear Model

  25 April 2011, by Harsh Kapoor

  To this day, contradictory estimations of the magnitude as well as the consequences of the Fukushima disaster continue to illustrate how an iron hand seems to tightly control information, in the ‘larger interests’, and the world’s major nuclear energy firms, pro-nuclear lobbies, Japan itself along with international authorities such as WHO, IAEA or CTBTO, seem to be engaged in the organised downplaying and retention of a precious information that citizens’ groups claim is already in their possession. Secrecy is built into the nuclear establishment’s mindset everywhere, and it prevails across the nuclear industry internationally.

• Evolution of Political Corruption

  25 April 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  In just about a year’s time, we shall be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s indepen-dence when power was transferred from the unwilling hands of the British rulers to the leaders of our freedom struggle. And it is exactly fifty years now that in the last general election under colonial rule, in 1946, the leader of the Indian National Congress toured the length and breadth of this vast land promising the public that once the power was transferred, he (…)

• Remembering Lenin

  25 April 2011

  (April 22 this year marks the 141st birth anniversary of that immortal revolutionary, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On this occasion we carry the following tributes to Lenin from two of our most distinguished national leaders.)
  Bolshevism...aims at the abolition of the institution of private property. This is only an application of the ethical ideal of non-possession in the realm of economy and if the people adopted this ideal of their own accord or could be made to accept it by means of peaceful (…)