Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• An Undeceived Leftist

  30 October 2010

  by N.S. Jagannathan
  My acquaintance with Nikhil Chakravartty began in the mid-sixties when I was working with The Hindustan Times. Mainstream had just been launched and my Leftist friends had introduced me to the journal and, a little later, to Nikhil himself. He had not yet become the father figure he had since, and even though I was much younger to him, pride would not let me address him as ‘Nikhilda’ as others had even then started to do. He was still a distant figure to me, though (…)

• The Power of One

  30 October 2010, by T J S George

  From the end of the 1950s, Delhi became India’s densest journalistic jungle. The transplantation there of a wholly Bombay phenomenon like Frank Moraes was a pointer to the inexorability of the process. No one will understand the economics of newspaper proliferation in Delhi. What is clear to all is that by the end of the Nehru era, the Capital of India had more journalists per square inch than any other city in the country.
  Among them were stars. Inevitably, some twinkled by pretension. (…)

• Commanding Moral Presence

  30 October 2010

  by Hiranmay Karlekar
  It is only with time that the magnitude of the void created by Nikhil Chakravartty’s passing becomes clear to some of us. Initially, we took the news with resignation; sorrow was tempered by the realisation that he was terminally ill and it was a matter of time. Gradually, however, the implications of the loss to India’s factured media of perhaps its most commanding moral presence begin to gnaw. Whose sober counsel, whose voice of wisdom stemming from a non-negotiable (…)

• Terror Cauldron in Response to Policy Failures

  30 October 2010, by Rakesh Gupta

  The drone attacks on the Afghan-Pak border killing civilians and terror alert in Europe fairly strongly link up with terror attacks by Mend in Nigeria, raising of the terror threat alert from red to scarlet in France and the stone-pelting youths and their consequent deaths in the Kashmir Valley inviting the all-party farcical visit to Srinagar. All these may have to deal with foreign policy and domestic policy. The level of violence is much deeper than the unprece-dented violence shown in (…)

• A Movement having the Potential to Benefit Millions of Poorest People

  30 October 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  The movement initiated by the ‘Campaign for Information and Employment (Suchna Evum Rogjar Adhikar Abhiyan—SERAA)’ in Rajasthan has the potential to benefit millions, even crores, of poorest people not only in Rajasthan but eventually all over India.
  The ‘yatra’ and people’s contact programme of this movement started in September with the predominant demand for increasing the minimum wage rate for workers. The State Government had last notified the minimum wage rate at Rs 100 per day for (…)

• Dams on Rivers: Learning from Overseas Experience

  30 October 2010

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Raj Kumar Sen
  Economics of River Flows: Lessons from Dam Removals in America by Bharat Jhunjhunwala (ed.); Kalpaz Publications, Delhi; pp. 311; Rs 750.
  This book under review attracts the attention of its readers from the pictures on its front and back covers. These are respectively of the Embrey Dam in operation, the Embrey Dam being removed, and the Rappahannock River flowing freely after removal of the dam. In a nutshell these three pictures tell the story of what (…)

• CWG, Karnataka, POSCO, Mumbai

  24 October 2010, by SC

  Last week it was written in these columns:
  Despite all the mismanagement, inadequacy of preparations and allegations of mega-size corruption that at one stage threatened the very holding of the XIX Commonwealth Games in the Capital, the Games have on the whole gone off well….
  The Games have indeed been a success defying all the initial fears and misgivings. Now has begun the probe into all the charges of corruption. The government had promised to conduct, after the gala sports (…)

• Majority of Posco Enquiry Committee Confirms - POSCO Project Is Illegal

  24 October 2010

  by Abhay Sahoo
  Today (October 18, 2000), three of the four members of the Committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests confirmed that the POSCO project is illegal and that all of its clearances were obtained by breaking the law. The Committee has also found that the project has potentially very dangerous impacts on issues like water, air pollution, and the coastline, and none of this was ever properly evaluated. After a detailed discussion of the huge number of criminal (…)

• Simplicity Extraordinaire: S.R. Sankaran (1934-2010)

  24 October 2010, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  TRIBUTE
  An Indian Airlines flight arrived at the Agartala Airport one late afternoon. It was a full flight. All the passengers scrambled down to pick up their baggage and leave for home. Among them was a short-statured, frail, middle-aged person wearing an ordinary bush shirt and slightly crumpled trousers. The only remarkable feature was his thick crop of well-parted shining black hair. He saw some flamboyant busybodies briskly moving up and down in search of somebody. The gentleman (…)

• Asiad, Akalis and AIR

  24 October 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  November nineteenth is Indira Gandhi’s birthday. Normally, her birthday so far has been a very private affair, not an event in the public calendar. Not so this year. If anything, it brings out in bold relief the strange convergence of events, unconnected with each other, but together generating tensions that add up to a first-class crisis. At the age of sixtyfive, the Prime Minister of India faces challenges which she finds difficult to overcome, largely because of the (…)