Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Angst of Wayward US Partnerships

  14 June 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  As the crow flies, just over a kilometre separates the White House from Foggy Bottom, the home of the United States Department of State, but the travel distance is longer. At any rate, the drive President Barack Obama took last Wednesday (June 2) from the heart of Washington to the border with Virginia was a rare one.
  Obama broke protocol by attending a reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in honour of her visiting Indian counter-part, S. M. Krishna, who co-chaired (…)

• Afghanistan: Essential Tasks

  14 June 2010, by Mansoor Ali

  One basic aspect of the international approach to Afghanistan is the tendency to shape strategy, make decisions and operate on the ground in a way that the Afghans perceive as disrespectful and sometimes arrogant. What the Americans did in Vietnam they are doing almost the same in Afghanistan without regard to the self-respect, pride and dignity as well as culture of the Afghan people, and the counterproductive nature of the consequences of such behaviour does not bear elaboration. In fact (…)

• Afzal and the Right to Fair Trial

  10 June 2010, by Nandita Haksar

  The TV channels continue to invite me to debates on death penalty. The corporate media refuses to understand that the fight for Afzal has nothing to do with the debate on death penalty. That is a separate debate. In the case of Mohammad Afzal Guru, the man convicted of being a part of the conspiracy to attack the Indian Parliament in December of 2001, the central question is whether an Indian citizen can be hung without a fair trial.
  The arguments for and against the death penalty to (…)

• Triumph of Vox Populi

  10 June 2010, by SC

  The gruesome act of sabotage leading to the derailment of the Howrah-Kurla Jnaneshwari Express that resulted in the death of around 150 persons while injuring about 200 near West Bengal’s Jhargram last Saturday, May 29, 2010, the UPA Government in its second tenure under the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh dispensation releasing a 68-page Report to the People, 2009-10, outlining its record over the past one year and highlighting the obvious success stories of UPA-II, and the startling outcome of (…)

• Freedom Flotilla Massacre In International Waters

  10 June 2010, by Arshi Khan

  Israeli attacks on the Freedom Flotilla ships in the morning of May 31 killing over 19 and injuring over 30 peace and humanitarian aid activists in the open seas (international waters, not Israeli zone) are brutal exposition of criminal acts under international law. Israeli helicopters and military ships carried out shooting over the unarmed persons without any warning simply for the reason that the ships were carrying humanitarian aid materials to the besieged Palestinians in Gaza suffering (…)

• Coalition Culture

  10 June 2010, by P R Dubhashi

  An economic textbook talks of the pheno-menon of the ‘importance of the unimportant’. The phenomenon is visible in coalition politics as well when small parties claim and receive importance disproportionate to their numbers in the elected bodies.
  Britain traditionally has been a two-party democracy in which in the election outcome one party gains absolute majority and forms the government. There is no ambiguity or uncertainty. But the May 6 election results brought about a different (…)

• The American Century Is So Over

  10 June 2010, by Dilip Hiro

  [This article appeared in tomdispatch.com from where it is being reproduced with the permission of Tom Engelhardt, the founder and editor of tomdispatch.com, and due acknowledgement.]
  Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a (…)

• Open Letter to Sonia Gandhi

  10 June 2010, by S G Vombatkere

  Dear Srimati Sonia Gandhi,
  I believe that you are one of the few people in the UPA Government who believes that governance includes looking at people’s problems rather than gunning solely for economic growth. This I understand from several statements made by you, in particular, regarding not allowing the dilution of the RTI Act and regarding getting to the root causes of the Maoist militancy rather than merely increasing the use of police force. It is this belief that prompts me to write (…)

• Can the Left (Communists) become the National Alternative?

  10 June 2010, by Sharad Patil

  I have slightly modified the title of Chaturanan Mishra’s paper in Mainstream (May 8, 2010). There is no traditional Socialist—even Lohiaite—party in India today. All Lohiaites have formed, according to Mishra, casteist parties. No united front with casteist parties, he declares; but as the Congress or its splinters, like the Maratha Sharad Pawer-led NC, are ‘secular’, the CPs may have united front with them in order to prevent the ‘communal’ BJP from coming to power.
  This shows that the (…)

• Happy but Insecure Kashmir

  10 June 2010, by Balraj Puri

  This article was written before the latest wave of unrest in the Kashmir Valley sparked by the plenomena of fake encounters.
  It was a pleasant diversion for the tension-ridden people of the Kashmir Valley when they celebrated the announcement that a Kashmiri boy, Shah Faesal, had topped the list of successful candidates of the Indian Administrative Service. There are already some IAS officers from Kashmir but this was the first time that a Kashmiri candidate had topped the list.
  The (…)