Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Upholding the Rule of Law

  25 July 2010, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  There is a whole lot of commotion in the country that our lives and liberty are being increasingly handed over to the police and the rule of law, whose main purpose is to punish the guilty and protect the innocent, is being given a go-bye.
  Several events lend credence to this sad conclusion.The killing of Azad, a widely travelled and respected Naxal leader, allegedly in an encounter by the government is not borne out by the statement of Swami Agnivesh who had been in touch with (…)

• Unsolved Question Paper of S.M. Krishna

  25 July 2010, by Ajay Mohan

  The Foreign Minister of India, Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna, went to China to reaffirm India’s strong bilateral relations with China. Both Asian giants very well understand they need each other. The External Affairs Minister went to China to re-energise Sino-Indian relations and remove all the dark shadows from the relationship. His going to China was to find the answers to some questions:
  1. Would China accept India’s demands on the border issue?
  2. Would China stop giving stapled (…)

• The Islamabad Fiasco

  25 July 2010, by SC

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  While the two major incidents of the last few days—the horrific train accident at Sainthia station in West Bengal’s Birbhum district (where the Sealdah-bound New Cooch Behar-Sealdah Uttarbanga Express rammed into the Bhagalpur-Ranchi Vananchal Express from behind) in the early hours of July 19 claiming, as per initial reports, 67 lives and injuring as many as 121 passengers and the shocking misdemeanour of the people’s representatives (…)

• The Overriding Task

  22 July 2010, by SC

  Last Friday, that is, on July 9, the Supreme Court upheld an order of the Bombay High Court to lift a four-year-old ban imposed by the Maharashtra Government on the publication and circulation of American scholar David Laine’s book, Shivaji: The Hindu King in Muslim India.
  Shortly after the verdict, which was hailed by activists as a “boost for freedom of speech”, the advocate representing Laine and the Oxford University Press hoped that henceforth governments would be more circumspect (…)

• The Substance and the Symbol

  22 July 2010, by Surendra Mohan

  If the most salient feature Indian politics were to be named, it would be its preference of the symbol over the substance. The decision to create a unified command in the Centre, increase in police force at the State levels and the creation of paratroops to fight against the Maoists begs the question as to what is the substantive cause of the rise of the Maoist threat. The frustrating of the people in the more devastated areas where mining operations have displaced the tribal people and the (…)

• Quarrelling with Indian Perceptions

  22 July 2010, by Arup Maharatna

  There are always some people born with an innate proclivity for forging an uncommon, or indeed often just the opposite, stance on nearly all debates, discussions, and conversations in life —mundane or otherwise. Barring such select characters with pathological passion for dissenting, nobody would dare to deny that the British colonial rule has been largely (and perhaps indeed directly to a substantial extent) responsible for India’s protracted socio-economic retrogression relative to many (…)

• Constricting Democratic Space through Terror

  22 July 2010, by Gladson Dungdung

  In the midst of the hide-and-seek between the sun and the cloud, the environment at the Jaipal Singh Stadium in Ranchi, the capital city of Jharkhand, was very tense on June 25, 2010. The reason was that the “Operation Green Hunt Virodhi Nagrik Manch” (Citizens Forum against Operation Green Hunt) had called a rally and mass meeting against the cold blooded murder, rape and torture of innocent villagers by the security forces in the ongoing so-called anti-Naxal operation codified as (…)

• Most Dangerous Region? Look West

  22 July 2010, by T J S George

  We think that the Indian subcontinent is the world’s most unstable region, given the dominance of religion, the Pakistan Army’s jealousy-tinged hatred of India and the rise of hatemongers like Narendra Modi. But take a trip westward and we’ll see that no part of the world is more dangerously unstable than the Arab region with Israel plonked in the centre of it thanks to the success of British machinations in 1948.
  It will remain so despite Israel’s current talk of “easing” the blockade of (…)

• Niyamgiri, Orissa and the Movie ‘Avatar’: Real And Reel—Uncanny Resemblances

  22 July 2010, by S G Vombatkere

  Prologue
  Stories are based upon past events, or personal or recorded human experience, embellished by imaginative thinking. They sometimes carry a clear “message” but quite often these days, the message is subtly hidden. In contemporary story-telling that is increasingly audio-visual, hi-tech special effects often draw audience and critics’ attention and help to cleverly conceal the message. One such is a recent Hollywood film written, directed and produced by James Cameron, titled (…)

• Wave of Crime and Labour Strikes in China

  22 July 2010, by Rakesh Gupta

  It is time and again that scribes write of the international crime syndicate as during the Cold War people wrote of the international terror network. Now they talk about regional centres. The bursting of the Russian spy ring in the US involving Ms Chapman accompanied by Clinton visiting Georgia, Abkhazia and Kiev is catching headlines. The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) is being blamed for criminal activities in the Middle East involving bank robberies, corruption and illicit business for these (…)