Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• World Economy Splutters: Dark Clouds on the Horizon

  21 April 2011, by Kobad Ghandy

  (This article was written much earlier last year by Kobad Ghandy, the Maoist leader, from Tihar Jail No. 3 (where he is lodged) for Mainstream but it reached us late. However, we are publishing it in view of the importance of its contents. He has promised to write a sequel to it. —Editor)
  On June 5, US economist Nouriel Roubini said in an interview: “The eurozone is facing a period of zero growth if not recession, and the United States is heading for financial trouble.”
  If corporate (…)

• An Engineer’s Observations on Economics

  21 April 2011, by Kunal Ghosh

  The constant talk of GDP growth and how India is one of the growth engines of the world, trumpeted day in and day out by our Ministers, media and Western experts, intrigue me. I wanted to read between the lines of growth statistics. I obtained the growth figures of the Indian economy from 1990-91 onward up to 2010-11. Up to 2005-06 the figures are from Wikipedia quoting authentic Government of India source, and the rest from the pages of a recent issue of Mainstream. (Anshuman Gupta 2011) (…)

• Tribute to Santosh Bhattacharyya

  21 April 2011, by Barun Das Gupta

  Santosh Bhattacharyya, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, who passed away in Kolkata last month, was an eminent Left intellectual, a distinguished economist and an uncompromising crusader for preserving the independence of educational institutions from intrusive political interference of the government in narrow partisan interests.
  He came in touch with the nascent Left movement in undivided Bengal as a student in the early 1940s and later became a wholetimer of the (…)

• Demographic Dividend and Health Concerns in India

  21 April 2011

  by M Benson Thomas
  A major dimension of the ongoing discourse on the population spurt in India is the significant question whether the country can attain the benefits of ‘demographic dividend’. By demo-graphic dividend we mean a rise in the rate of economic growth due to a rising share of the working age population. It is understood that the dividend occurs when a decline of birth and death within a short span of time creates an excessive shift in the age structure of the population (…)

• No Need to Bribe a British Journalist

  21 April 2011, by T J S George

  When Neville Maxwell is on the move, can misfortune be far behind? This former British journalist recently published an article on “The Pre-history of the Sino-Indian Border Dispute”. (Mainstream, February 12, 2011) The gist is that India has no business being in Arunachal Pradesh.
  Maxwell’s thesis is that Henry McMahon who drew the present border “engaged in cartographic trickery” to produce a “deceitful map”. As for Olaf Caroe who succeeded McMahon, he “began to falsify evidence so that (…)

• Dr Ambedkar: Architect of the Indian Constitution

  21 April 2011, by Gurnam Chand

  Due to his seminal role in the framing of the Indian Constitution, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar is popularly known all over India as the chief architect of the Indian Constitution. His efforts to eradicate social evils were remarkable and that is why he is called the “messiah” of the Dalits and downtrodden in India. Dr Ambedkar was appointed the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee. The text prepared by Ambedkar provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of civil (…)

• Kazakhstan Presidential Election Shows How To Legalise An Authoritarian Regime

  21 April 2011

  KAZAKELECART 2011
  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  During the last few months popular uprisings have swept several countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia. For instance, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Kyrgyzstan etc. have witnessed mass unrest and violent protests against authoritarian regimes. The Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, who was ruling for decades, was forced to relinquish power. The fate of the Libyan President Gaddafi is hanging in balance. In the Kyrgyz Republic the former (…)

• A Note on What Ails the Kashmiri Pandit Community

  21 April 2011

  by P.N. Sadhu
  The following piece is being published as a point of view of the author who himself is a Kashmir Pandit.
  It is a privilege for me to write an article on what ails the Kashmiri Pandit community. What prompted me to write this is a request by the Kashmir Samiti, Panchkula.
  Although I do not consider myself qualified to comment on this vast and complex subject, still in the following paras I pen down my thoughts and suggestions.
  We, of the Kashmiri Pandit community, have (…)

• When the Left becomes Bereft of Pro-people Ideology and Conduct

  21 April 2011, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  COMMUNICATION
  Prof Prabhat Patnaik’s piece “Why the Left Matters” in The Indian Express, reproduced by Mainstream (March 26, 2011), is a mix of the serious and the comic. In the portion in which he presents an expose of the practitioners of “neo-liberalism”, he is at his passionate best. One has to readily agree with him that those who are leading India up the garden path of market economy, pro-MNC liberalisation, pro-finance capital globalisation are indeed plunging the majority of (…)

• Mass Response to Anna Hazare’s Crusade

  14 April 2011, by SC

  After the scenes of widespread jubilation portraying unprecedented national unity in the cricket field with India’s successful wresting of the World Cup defeating Sri Lanka on April 2, a remarkable phenomenon has rocked the country as a whole.
  Eminent Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare’s dauntless and courageous fight against ubiquitous corruption has assumed the form of a veritable mass upsurge on the third day of his indefinite fast-unto-death in the Capital’s Jantar Mantar demanding (…)