Mainstream Weekly

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• Reflections from Eden Gardens

  14 April 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings In the light of the cricket fever that has gripped the entire country following India’s spectacular win over Sri Lanka at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on April 2 to lift the World Cup, we are reproducing N.C.’s following article written for The Tribune precisely 15 years ago (it was later published in Mainstream on March 23, 1996) after the unsavoury incidents at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens where the India-Sri Lanka semifinal on March 13, 1996 had to be abandoned due to the (…)

• Bhagat Singh — A Remembrance

  14 April 2011, by Sheel Bhadra Kumar

  Last month the eightieth anniversary of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru’s martyrdom was observed on March 23. We offer our sincere homage to Bhagat Singh and recall his heroism while projecting his radical socialist ideas in the present context.
  When the 80th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, March 23 [he was born on September 28, 1907 at Lyallpur Barga in the district Nawanshehar, now in Pakistan], is being observed, he has been described as an aatanki [terrorist] in two (…)

• Tribute to Ajit Bhattacharjea

  14 April 2011, by SC

  Veteran journalist and editor Ajit Bhattacharjea, 86, passed away at his residence in New Delhi on April 4, 2011 after a protracted illness—he was battling galloping cancer originating from a tumour in his brain.
  His wife, Dr Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, an acknowledged authority on China’s foreign relations, having predeceased him on December 13, 2009, he is survived by his son Aditya and daughters Suman and Nomita, besides three grandchildren.
  Born in Shimla in 1924, he did his BA and MA (…)

• JP’s Message

  14 April 2011, by Ajit Bhattacharjea

  Jayaprakash Narayan has left a heritage of unremitting intellectual and political pursuit of individual freedom and social justice. He campaigned for human rights everywhere, including Kashmir, Nagaland and Tibet. His transparent sincerity, simplicity, openness to new ideas and willingness to re-examine his own made it a privilege to know him.
  Yet one cannot say that the social evils against which he struggled are nearer solution today, 19 years after he left us. In many ways the (…)

• Silver Lining amid Ominous Forebodings

  8 April 2011, by SC

  As we go to press disturbing news has come from Washington: according to one report, highlighted by Russia Today or RT, one of the most independent foreign news channels in the world, US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorising the CIA to arm the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya; other reports quote senior American officials suggesting a fierce debate within the US Administration on this issue of supplying arms to the Libyan rebels with some apprehending that such a step (…)

• Behind The Arab Revolt Is A Word We Dare Not Speak

  8 April 2011

  by John Pilger
  This article, circulated by Countercurrents, reached us sometime ago but we could not use it earlier for unavoidable reasons. But we are publishing it now due to its abiding relevance.
  Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared the President’s daily intelligence brief. McGovern was at the apex of the “national security” monolith, that is, American power, and had retired with presidential (…)

• Justice Srikrishna Committee Report and Statehood for Telangana

  8 April 2011, by C.H. Hanumantha Rao

  No one from Telangana asked for the appointment of the Srikrishna Committee. The Centre perhaps wanted to buy time after there was severe opposition from the influential and vocal sections of Seemandhra to the announcement of its decision on December 9, 2009 to initiate the process of the formation of Telangana State.
  But once the Committee was constituted, there was widespread curiosity within the country and abroad to know the findings of an expert and impartial committee headed by a (…)

• BSP’s Route to 2012

  8 April 2011, by Shyam Singh

  The next State Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are scheduled in the summer of 2012. This article presents the prospects of the BSP in next State Assembly elections. After securing absolute majority in the UP State Assembly elections in 2007, and the successful inception of social engineering, the BSP adopted the Sarvajan policy as a guiding mantra of the present BSP Government. This policy speaks about the inclusion of all sections of the society into the framework of the government’s (…)

• Bangladesh: Before Accusing Sheikh Hasina Government Need for a Close Look at Yunus’ Grameen Bank

  8 April 2011, by Amitava Mukherjee

  It is difficult to predict what denouement the spat between the Sheikh Hasina-led Bangladesh Government and Mohammed Yunus, the Noble Laureate, would ultimately reach but it has undoubtedly brought to the fore many pitfalls of the micro-credit system which has so far been hailed as a panacea for poverty alleviation not just in the Third World countries but in many developed nations too. It may be a bit unfair to portrait Yunus as one who has only committed all kinds of wrongs but at the same (…)

• Taming the “Wild West” of Microfinance

  8 April 2011, by Kavaljit Singh

  The recent suicides by over 60 poor borrowers in the State of Andhra Pradesh have brought the operations of the microfinance institutions (MFIs) under public scrutiny. It is well documented by both print and electronic media that these debt-driven suicides were due to the coercive methods of loan recovery used by the commercial MFIs. The commercial MFIs operate as profit-making non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) in India.
  The majority of suicides took place in the Warangal (…)