Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• WikiLeaks, US, Pakistan, Afghanistan

  12 December 2010, by Bashir Mohammad

  As the arrested founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange in a signed article in The Australian, titled “Don’t shoot the messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths”, on December 8 called for the “need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth”, there appears to be a fierce competition between two major figures in the “Free World”—US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Republican Sarah Palin (who contested the last 2008 US poll for the post of Vice-President)—in attacking Assange (…)

• Revisiting Obama’s Visit

  12 December 2010

  by Suvrat Raju
  Although the mainstream media collectively swooned on President Barack Obama—when he visited India in early November—and breath-lessly informed its audience about how many rooms he had booked at various five-star hotels, there was little discussion on two key questions. What is Obama’s foreign policy record? Is it consistent with his portrayal as a progressive world leader? Moreover, what impact will his visit have on most Indians?
  Obama’s Foreign Policy
  SUPPORTERS of (…)

• Ensuring Justice to People

  12 December 2010, by R Venkataraman

  ON RAMASWAMI VENKATARAMAN’S BIRTH CENTENARY
  The birth centenary of our former President, Ramaswami Venkataraman (1910-2009), fell last week on December 4. Remembering him on this occasion we are reproducing here a speech he delivered more than 25 years ago—at the inaugural function of the Society for Law and Justice, New Delhi on March 15, 1985. We also reproduce, with due acknowledgement, an appropriate tribute by the country’s leading strategic expert that appered in The Indian Express (…)

• The Copy-book President

  12 December 2010, by K. Subrahmanyam

  President R. Venkataraman, whose 100th birthday falls today, called himself a copy-book President, and compared the role of the Indian presidency to that of an “emergency light” which comes into play only when needed. His style of functioning as a copy-book President was in sharp contrast with that of his predecessor, during whose last two years in office Delhi was rife with rumours of his attempts to dismiss an elected Prime Minister with a massive majority in the Lok Sabha.
  Though (…)

• Upholding Objectivity beyond the Culture of Sycophancy

  12 December 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  We as a nation have taken pride in the fact that in political life, a liberal and tolerant approach has become the hall-mark of Indian democracy. While differences have always cropped up in our national movement involving the giants among its leadership, there was by and large adherence to the principle of live and let live.
  In our young days, we in Bengal looked upto Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das as our leader, and yet when he and Motilal Nehru differed from Gandhiji (…)

• Free Speech in the History of Ideas

  12 December 2010, by Meher Engineer

  Preamble
  “Indian historians have forgotten the history of ideas.” The claim appeared as the headline of a recent newspaper article.1 Add it to your worry-list if you will, but do not forget as you do that similar claims can be made, with as much force, about many of the country’s civil and political societies. The frequent rows that erupt over “seditious speech” make that obvious.
  Seditious Speech in India
  LOTS of people make such speeches, without any- one saying anything. But (…)

• When the Police Break the Law

  12 December 2010

  by Arup Dasgupta
  India’s emergence as the fourth largest economy with its burgeoning growth story conceals the grim world of poverty and deprivation of her teeming millions across the vast countrywide. The largest democracy of the world has spawned a kind of political culture of arrogance and muscle-flexing that every political party has adopted as its working principle. When there is disaffection among the poor resulting in the decline of law and order, the state intervenes with (…)

• End of Human Rights in Post-Modern Era

  12 December 2010, by Sunita Samal

  Though in the wake of 9/11 and attack on Iraq there is a shift from deconstruction towards politics, deconstruction is of great assistance to post-human cultural studies when it comes to analysing its relationship with politics. Cultural studies have tended to place human rights in a transcendental position with respect to all other discourses. Human rights cannot flourish without interaction of the civil society with the constitutive outside in a particular order.
  It is through rhetoric (…)

• Understanding the Status of Climate Change and Refugees

  12 December 2010

  by Sonali Narang
  It is now a well accepted fact that climate change has become the most dangerous problem before humanity. In this paper, I have tried to explain how the process of migration, which is stimulated by climate change, is leading to displacement of people particularly in South Asia.
  Climate Change and Displacement
  MILLIONS of people around the globe are at the risk of displacement due to climate change turning them out of their homes, whether temporarily or permanently. It (…)

• Comprehensive Plan Needed for Helping the Homeless

  12 December 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  No matter how tired we are in the course of a difficult day’s work, there is always the reassuring feeling that at the end of the hard work we’ll go back to sleep in the comfort of our home. But there are millions of people in our cities who simply do not have a home. The homeless of our cities suffer the most; yet they are the most neglected. No matter how adverse the weather conditions, they’ve to generally spend their nights on the footpath, near the railway station or bus stop or (…)