Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Fake Encounters in Jharkhand

  20 September 2010, by Gladson Dungdung

  In the afternoon on July 5, 2010, the security forces, comprising the JAP and SAF under the leadership of E.H. Siddique, the officer-in-charge of Tamar Police Station, arrived in Gunti village and picked up 45-year-old Etwa Munda of Papirdah village (which comes under Tamar Police Station of Ranchi district in Jharkhand), when he was in the house of his relative Manav Munda. The police also caught a girl, Bengi Kumari, and escorted both of them towards Jabla pahari (forest). After sometime, (…)

• Back to the Basics?

  17 September 2010, by SC

  The PM’s 90-minute interaction with a select group of editors in New Delhi on September 6 was intended to convey to the media and the public at large that the UPA-II dispensation headed by Dr Manmohan Singh was not gripped by a sense of drift as is the dominant impression today. There is no gainsaying that this impression has been strengthened by the head of government’s lacklustre performance in Parliament’s monsoon session if one excludes his impassioned speech during discussion on the (…)

• Nine Years On: India’s Strategic Hot Potato

  17 September 2010, by S G Vombatkere

  September 11, 2001. The world stood aghast at the real-time TV screening of the audacious, coordinated attack on the WTC and Pentagon and trembled when, weeks later, the USA invaded Afghanistan in retaliation to what was under-stood as an Al-Qaeda attack under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. This was first seen as a knee-jerk reaction to retrieve American pride and prop up the USA’s international image, but soon enough the world interpreted it as a strategic move to gain a secure foothold (…)

• Aping the Adversary

  17 September 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  It is surprising how intelligent people in politics sometimes take up positions which should logically belong to their adversaries.
  The Muslim League in 1940 picked up the so-called ‘two-nation theory’ which a bunch of extremist intellectuals had first coined to back up their demand for Pakistan. Other parties in India rejected it. The Congress made it clear that it did not accept the theory itself though it agreed to the partitioning of the country on the basis of the very same (…)

• Samjhauta Express Bomb Blast: Can we Ever Unravel the Conspiracy?

  17 September 2010, by Subhash Gatade

  With no breakthrough in the over three-year-old Samjautha Express blast case, the government has decided to hand over its probe to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to unravel the conspiracy. “The Samjhauta blast case has been handed over to the NIA,” Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Home Ministry Utthan Kumar Bansal told reporters on the sidelines of a function in New Delhi.
  Sixtyeight people were killed when bombs were set off in two coaches of cross-country Samjhauta (…)

• So, What Colour Is Terror?

  17 September 2010, by Badri Raina

  “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity.” —Shelley
  I
  Shelley was never more wrong, but to that I shall return.
  Currently, one of the “burning issues” on media channels here in India is what colour we may ascribe or not ascribe to terror. A conundrum, if there ever was one.
  The matter has arisen from a comment made by the honourable Home Minister (read Minister of the Interior, incharge of “security” of the realm) to a conclave of senior (…)

• Call for Ban on Hindutva Terrorist Organisations

  17 September 2010, by Syed Shahabuddin

  Syed Shahabuddin, President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, has issued the following statement.
  The ugly face of Hindutva terrorism stands fully exposed, alongwith its connection with the Sangh Parivar and some Hindu religious figures, as well as its tentacles in some sections of the Army, the intelligence agencies and the police.
  Since 2001 several acts of terrorism were attributed to the Muslims even before completing the investigations. It is now clear that many of them were (…)

• Indian Economic Reform as an Example of Disaster Capitalism

  17 September 2010, by Abigail Dawn Mcgillivary

  Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate. They want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places that formed them. But disaster capitalism’s ‘reconstruction’ begins with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what is left of the public sphere and then quickly moving to replace them with corporate-designed economic and political structures before the victims of the (…)

• Pulling Out is not Peace, Obama needs to Re-do his Sums

  17 September 2010, by H K Dua

  Most reports emanating from Washington indicate that the United States is caught in an acute dilemma over Afghanistan. Having spent nine years fighting in the mountainous terrain without achieving what it wanted to, policy-makers in Washington are debating not the pros and cons of a pull-out, but when to pull out of Afghanistan.
  The issue will be clinched in December when President Barak Obama has called a high-level review conference after which he will take the call about the time-table (…)

• Karzai Reaches Out To Delhi: A Refreshing Sight

  17 September 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The consultations by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul and National Security Advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta in New Delhi in successive weeks will be noted regionally and internationally. They took place at a critical juncture in the geopolitics of the region.
  For Indian foreign policy-makers, Afghanistan assumes an unprecedented priority today as the stakes are high for national security, and harmonising our vital interests and core concerns with those of the international community (…)