Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Salute to a Purushottama

  12 December 2010, by T J S George

  TRIBUTE
  These are days when the success of an author depends less on the worth of his writings and more on the vigour with which he promotes himself through book launches, television conversations and lectures organised by the marketing department of publishing companies. P. Lal did none of these. So his death (November 3) went almost unnoticed. A newspaper para-graph or two in his home town of Kolkata and that was that.
  Yet P. Lal’s place in the literary history of India will be more (…)

• Delaying Enactment of Law on ‘Honour’ Killing

  12 December 2010

  by M.S. Jaglan
  There is a growing concern among the liberal minded individuals, social and democratic organisations and even international institutions on the rising trend of brutal killings of innocent youngsters in the name of family or clan honour in India. The United Nations also takes a very serious view of such heinous crimes. The naked brutality of such acts against women is in contravention of the spirit of the ’United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of (…)

• Honour Killing is Not Caste, Religion-specific

  12 December 2010

  by M.S. Rana
  Honour is the most precious moral attribute of mankind. It is deeply ingrained in its nature. Defence of honour even at the cost of life has been prevalent in human beings since ages. It is a commonwealth of close blood relatives. Defilement of honour is taken as the most atrocious social crime and its redemption becomes a joint and sacred duty of close-knit people. Debased groups have a soft approach towards transgression of honour. The sentimental chord dormant in them may (…)

• Destructive Face of Nuclear Attacks

  12 December 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  We are all aware how destructive modern war, particularly nuclear war, can become, but still very few people may be aware that for a considerable period of recent history as many as 170 to 290 million (17 to 29 crore) killings were to be carried out in a single overwhelming nuclear attack. This doesn’t include deaths from the longer-term impact of nuclear weapons.
  This happened around the year 1960 when the US military prepared its first formal nuclear war plan called the (…)

• ’Operation NGO Hunt’ in Jharkhand

  12 December 2010, by Gladson Dungdung

  The Jharkhand Government has launched a new operation in the State; it can be called “Operation NGO Hunt”. In a latest discovery, the Jharkhand Police have found 1300 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as sympa-thisers of the Naxalites though nobody knows the ‘parameters’ of the ‘sympathisers’. However, the way the state is behaving with these organisations, it is very clear that anyone who raises questions against the violation of the rights of the people residing in the Red Corridor is (…)

• Destructive Zombie and Return of Karl Marx

  12 December 2010, by Devdatt P. Dubhashi

  BOOK REVIEW
  Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx; by Chris Harman; Bookmarks Publications; 2009.
  Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. For Chris Harman, as pictured on the cover of the book, it is better compared to the mindless, destructive zombie, ’seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings, but capable of sudden spurts of activity (…)

• A Non-Communist’s Salutations to Jagannath Sarkar

  12 December 2010, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  [Many Streams: Selected Essays by Jagannath Sarkar and Reminiscing Sketches was brought out last April in Patna to honour the veteran Communist leader of Bihar, Jagannath Sarkar. The author, who knew Jagannath Sarkar quite well, went through the publication and sent the following article for Mainstream. —Editor[
  This is not a review of the charming collection of essays by Jagannath Sarkar and his admirers but a tribute to Jagannathda, a gentle colossus, made brief by a severe constraint of (…)

• CPI (Maoist) and Operation Green Hunt

  12 December 2010

  COMMUNICATION
  About one hundred and fifty years ago Karl Marx, in a historic study, observed that British imperial capitalism smashed the economic foundation of the then pre-colonial India based on self-contained and self-sustained village units with a static stability for centuries. This develop-ment, of course, was facilitated by the Indian bourgeoisie after independence. But it appears that vast patches of areas, by no means insignifi-cant and inhabited by poor tribal people with their (…)

• Beacon of Hope

  12 December 2010, by SC

  The deadlock in Parliant continues with the proceedings of both Houses disrupted for the 15th day. The Union Government is in no mood to accede to the Opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the 2G spectrum scam which the latter has amplified as the biggest scam in independent India. That is because such a JPC would have the authority to summon the PM before it; and this the government would under no circumstance allow.
  On its part the united Opposition has (…)

• Regional Implications of Russian President’s Forthcoming Visit

  12 December 2010, by Mansoor Ali

  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is visiting India in the second half of this month following French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s trip to New Delhi. The visit assume significance not only as yet another milestone in further enhancing the time-tested Indo-Russian cooperation, but in the context of the worsening situation in Afghanistan in particular; the threat of a Taliban takeover of Kabul is quite potent at this juncture and, according to keen observers and experts of the South West Asian (…)