Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Significance of Okada’s Visit to India

  2 September 2010, by Rajaram Panda

  The Foreign Minister of Japan, Okada Yatsuya, visited India on August 21, 2010 as a part of his five-day trip to India and Thailand. During his visit, Okada held important discussions with his counterpart; S.M. Krishna, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. Okada had the fourth round of strategic dialogue with his counterpart. However, what emerged as the most important agenda in the dialogue (…)

• Mamata, Maoists and Indian Democracy

  2 September 2010, by Ambrose Pinto

  There was uproar in Parliament against Mamata Banerjee and her party for inviting the Maoists for her rally in Lalgarh. The uproar continues and there have been arguments for and against what Mamata Banerjee said and did. That violence has no place in a democracy is accepted by all. Nobody can glorify violence, not even the state. But the central question is: why is it that we have not succeeded in handling the Maoist and Naxal issue threatening the foundations of our democracy? There is no (…)

• The Stark Reality

  22 August 2010, by SC

  We are on the threshold of yet another Independence Day—our sixtyfourth. In the last 63 years since August 15, 1947 the country has registered considerable progress in different spheres ranging from science and technology including nuclear power, and heavy industry to Information Technology, an area where our achievements are unhesitatingly recognised by the most developed nations of the world. We have also emerged as a major power in today’s global scenario by dint of our advancement in (…)

• Celebrating Independence Day

  22 August 2010, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  It will be our 64th Independence Day on August 15, 2010 and a time to celebrate according to our official calendar. Personally, I have found little cause for celebrating it as our independence Day. Achieving independence of the British was hardly a rare event. Firstly there had been many more invaders of our country who had beaten us either temporarily or till they had been ousted by another invader like the Mughals by the East India Company and then the British Government or had been been (…)

• Jettison Jammu And Kashmir From India-Pakistan Imbroglio

  22 August 2010, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Well over three score and three years we two neighourly Republics have become indigent independent countries. India, that is, Bharat, a united Republic, would be a culturally powerful and resourceful nation. But while giving Freedom from the imperial Crown, a treacherous stratagem was practised. India was divided into Bharat and Pakistan ever to be on belligerent terms with communal hatred. And as disastrous history would have it, J&K, a Muslim majority State, has its resources wasted on (…)

• Promises to Keep

  22 August 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Fifteenth of Agust is a sacred day in the annals of our nation as the day that marked the dawn of freedom from colonial bondage. And it is also the day of promises to keep. This country won its political independence not without a commitment, and that commitment was to emancipate its millions from the grinding poverty imposed by the social and economic structure built under colonial rule.
  This is the pledge that successive generations of the nation’s leadership (…)

• Poverty Tourism: A New Growth Industry or Pilgrimage for Power!

  22 August 2010, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  By now it is clear that the real-life experience has removed the ground from under the feet of neo-liberalism. On the one hand the whole world is witness to the fiasco of neo-liberalism at the global level. The stock markets and the corporate bottom-lines are heading towards the same old pre-recession levels while the masses are languishing. Based on massive public money based bailout packages of the financial sector (a process of socialisation of the losses of speculative capital grown too (…)

• Bhopal, Plachimada, Worth of an Ordinary Citizen and Development

  22 August 2010, by K Saradamoni

  I was watching a ‘reality show’, titled Citizen Journalist, in a Malayalam TV channel. The participant, a young man, reported on a colony of adivasis. Supported by effective visuals he showed the deprivation in the area and the utter despair in the life of the people. Strangely the local MLA had no knowledge of the area. The people, though poor in every respect, knew that they were remembered only at the time of elections. They know nothing of their rights. Two of the judges of the show (…)

• A Note on the Current Political Situation

  22 August 2010, by Randhir Singh

  By way of explanation the author, one of the most successful teachers in the University of Delhi as a Professor of Political Theory (now retired), writes:
  “The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my (…)

• Statement Released by Women and Mothers on Killings in Kashmir Valley

  22 August 2010

  The Mothers of India on August 6, 2010 released the following statement on the killings in Kashmir.
  There is a sound in Kashmir that resonates longer than the staccato of the gun. There is a sound in Kashmir that wants the violence to stop. There is a sound in Kashmir that doesn’t care about politics. There is a sound in Kashmir echoing: STOP, Enough! It is the sound of mothers crying as they wait for their children to return knowing that they may not. Wailing, as they wonder why their (…)