Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• ’Sri Lankan Model’ is No Model

  16 July 2010, by T J S George

  If it takes a thief to catch a thief, can we say it requires terrorism to defeat terrorism? That is the theory Mahenda Rajapakse put into practice in Sri Lanka. Because he succeeded in crushing Prabhakaran’s LTTE, the “Sri Lankan Model” is now attracting the attention of other governments that face internal insurrections.
  Perhaps the most notable example is the not widely publicised visit Burma’s military dictator Than Shwe paid to Colombo recently. Than Shwe rarely travels outside his (…)

• Is South Block Listening?

  10 July 2010, by SC

  Last month it was written in these columns in Mainstream (June 19): What is most amazing is that at a time when inflation reigns high, the government is thinking of deregulation of the pricing of such intermediaries as petroleum products.
  Now the government has actually gone in for decontrol of petrol prices and this has been predictably hailed by the industry as a whole as a “welcome move”. As the FICCI Secretary-General has observed, People tend to consume more fuel than necessary if (…)

• US Bid To Make Way For Taliban’s Induction In Kabul: Compounding Earlier Follies

  10 July 2010, by Bashir Mohammad

  The strategy devised at the London Conference on Afghanistan last January—“reintegration and reconciliation”—is a veiled scheme to once again hand over Afghanistan to Pakistan through the vehicle of the Taliban (whose acceptability is being sought to be ensured by the use of such an adjective as “moderate” which in reality is hollow, senseless and bereft of any meaning). US President Barack Obama’s rhetoric on the “Way Forward in Af-Pak” has the same thrust.
  The consequences of this (…)

• Kyrgyz Crisis and Regional Security

  10 July 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Indian discourse on regional security has traditionally paid scant attention to the country’s extended neighbourhood of Central Asia. No discourse on the Afghan problem will be complete without co-relating it with the geopolitics of Central Asia, and yet our strategic thinkers somehow manage without it.
  The crisis in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan no doubt holds out grave impli-cations for regional security and India cannot remain impervious to them. Kyrgyzstan too is a (…)

• Who’s Afraid of Caste Census?

  10 July 2010, by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

  Ever since the Centre announced that it would collect data on various castes during the ongoing Census, the media has created a hue and cry saying that this would harm the nation and open a Pandora’s Box of caste conflicts. On the other hand, those who seek caste enumeration are of the view that this would clear the cobwebs and deliver proper data on other backward classes (OBCs) that will help implement reservation policies and welfare schemes better. The collection of caste data was not a (…)

• Caste Wise Census

  10 July 2010, by Shree Shankar Sharan

  It has become difficult to engage in an honest and objective discourse on policies overladen with the caste question if you happen to belong to the upper caste, lest you lose the trust of the OBC whose social and economic emancipation has been the passion of your life.
  That is the reason why so many committed social workers of the upper caste have opted to join casteist parties; they would otherwise not have joined, because of their desire to express solidarity with their so-called lower (…)

• Caste Census of India 2011?—Justification and Objective for Braking Caste

  10 July 2010, by A K Biswas

  In existence as an intractable institution since immemorial, caste is based on divine authority of unchallengeable sanctity. The Rig Vedas propounded it. Manu, Yajnavalkya, Parasara and many others trumpeted it in earshattering pitch. Every scripture, mythological fiction and ancient epic adopted this pre-ordained line and parroted it. As foot soldiers, sages and seers were in the forefront in preaching messages of divinity of caste across India. Given this historical background, the present (…)

• And Football Produces Gods

  10 July 2010, by T J S George

  Not all the misplaced genius of the Lalit Modis and the Sharad Pawars of our land can generate the drama and passion football inspires. India is a net loser in becoming a cricket-only country. On the one hand, it destroys the spirit of cricket itself by turning it into a crass money machine. On the other, it leads to the neglect of glorious games like hockey and football.
  Cricket covers but a few countries; football is universal. Cricket is colonial; football is democratic. Cricket, (…)

• Kerala: Issue of Identity Politics and New Election Strategy of the CPI-M

  10 July 2010, by N A Karim

  Identity politics is the latest ideological issue that is being hotly discussed by political intellectuals particularly in the party precincts of the Communist Party of Kerala-Marxist. This issue was in circulation among a narrow section of Left ideologues specially after the publication of the book Manifesto of the Victims in Malayalam, written a few years ago by Prof K.E.N. Kunjahammad, a staunch supporter of the CPI-M and a much sought after writer and speaker of the party and its front (…)

• Tribal Areas in Ferment

  10 July 2010, by Syed Shahabuddin

  Tribals are, on the whole, the poorest section of the Indian people, socially and educationally the most deprived, economically the most back-ward and the most exploited, whose community land has been taken away on one pretext or the other, whose forests, even their minor products, have been placed out of bounds for them, whose non-renewable mineral resources have been handed over to outsiders for profitable extraction in the name of national development, who have been suffering injustice (…)