Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Azad’s Communication to Swami Agnivesh on Chidambaram’s Offer for Talks

  16 July 2010

  Late at night on July 1-2, 2010 Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson, was killed in the Jogarpur forest area near Sarkapalli village in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district. Azad was shot dead by the Andhra Police.
  According to an official of the Special Intelligence Branch (SIT), “We raided on a tip-off. About 25 Maoists were present there. The fire-fight started late in the night and ended at 3 am. Two persons were shot dead by police while the rest escaped. One of (…)

• ‘Let Us Not Make Truth A Casualty In This War’: Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad

  16 July 2010

  TRIBUTE
  Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, killed by the Andhra Pradesh Police, was a brilliant student of Regional Engineering College, Warangal, where he studied M.Tech in the late seventies. He led the Andhra Pradesh Radical Student Union after the Emergency. Subsequently he went underground and had been looking after political and organisational responsibilities for over 30 years. He was a member of the CPI (Maoist) Central Committee and Political Bureau and functioned as the party’s (…)

• Give the Adivasis a New Deal and Change the Development Paradigm

  16 July 2010, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  TO FIGHT PSEUDO-MAOIST MENACE
  Few, among the top political executives, realise that our own fate is inextricably linked up with the fate of the adivasis. If mankind is to survive, it has to imbibe the quintessence of communitarian spirit and conservation ethics of the tribals. Modernism’s accent on individualism has led to acute self-centredness of a rapacious civilisation that has reached its peak in assured mutual destruction. Redemption from the looming threat of self-destruction lies (…)

• Jnaneshwari Express Sabotage and Mass Murder Case

  16 July 2010, by Dipak Kumar Ghosh

  Jnaneshwari Express Sabotage and The people of the unfortunate State of West Bengal will recall the five famous cases of Bhikhari Paswan murder, Choto Angaria mass murder, Tapasi Malik rape and murder, Nandigram mass murder and Rizwanur Rahaman murder. There are some more similar cases, but the people distinctly remember these five important cases where the findings of the State CID were completely overturned by the subsequent CBI investigation.
  Since the disastrous results in the last (…)

• The Danger Of Fighting Maoists Without Knowing Who They Are

  16 July 2010, by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

  A recent news report revealed that after its initial reluctance the Army is now raising a 50,000 strong force to fight the Naxal war. Quite expected. The state cannot afford to lose any war it has started to impose its writ on the territory it owns.
  That’s what we are told every now and then. The ‘state’s writ’, ‘democracy,’ ‘development’, and so many arguments are put forward to prove the legitimacy of a war against the Maoists. A civilised society cannot tolerate such dissent, we are (…)

• A Research Project on Gandhi and M.N. Roy

  16 July 2010, by R M Pal

  I wrote the following outline of a comparative study of M. N Roy and Gandhi in 1992, when I retired from Rajdhani College, University of Delhi. I did not intend sitting idle and wanted to do some research on Gandhi and M.N. Roy. I thought I might be able to keep myself engaged in writing on this subject and a friend of mine, who knows my background, suggested that I should be able to get a grant from the ICSSR for doing research on this topic. That’s how I wrote the outline. One day I went (…)

• Developmental State and People’s Struggle for Land Rights

  16 July 2010, by Suranjita Ray

  On May 15, 2010 the police fired rubber bullets and tear gas shells and lathicharged hundreds of villagers staging a dharna on the road at Balitutha in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa to clear all hurdles against land acquisition and allotment of mines to Posco at the earliest as committed by the government.1 To help the administration acquire land for the steel project—Posco—police mercilessly beat up the villagers injuring more than 100 including many women from Dhinkia and nearby (…)

• Conscience and Charar-e-Sharief

  16 July 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  One month to date after the destruction of the shrine and mosque at Charar-e-Sharief, a team of journalists reached the township. As one looked round the ghastly devastation of rows of burnt houses with their walls standing as mute witnesses to the crime, spontaneously it came to one’s lips: if you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
  As one slowly climbed the stone slabs at the threshold of the complex, one could almost sense that on those stones have fallen for (…)

• On Sharad Patil’s Rejoinder

  16 July 2010, by Chaturanan Mishra

  COMMUNICATION
  In criticism of my article “Can the Left become the National Alternative (Mainstream, May 8, 2010), Sharad Patil, the General Secretary of the Satyashodhak Communist Party, has in his rejoinder “Can the Left (Communists) become the National Alternative?” (Mainstream, June 5, 2010) written: “All Lohiaites have formed, according to Mishra, casteist parties.” This is totally false. I have not written in my article anything regarding Lohiaites. Hence this is Asatyam Samarthan. (…)

• Climate Change: Socio-Political Implications

  16 July 2010, by Sujit Lahiry

  Climate change is a very complex issue. In recent years, climate change and global warming have become matters of intense heated debate among policy-makers, analysts and acade-micians. At the same time, climate change has become an integral part of the growing literature on environmental discourse. The vagaries of climate change are unfolding in such a manner that it affects the security and well-being of all living beings. How is climate affected? How do we map climate change? What are the (…)