Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Remembering Karl Marx

  25 May 2010

  [May 5 this year marked the one hundred and ninetysecond birth anniversary of Karl Marx. On this occasion we remember that immortal revolutionary with the following excerpts from his unforgettable writings and speeches. —Editor]
  “In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive (…)

• Absence of a Policy-Perspective

  21 May 2010, by SC

  While Conservative leader David Cameron took over on May 11 as Britain’s 53rd PM with the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg as his deputy in the first coalition government in the UK in 65 years, in our country Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has become another member of the Union Council of Ministers to be suffering from the ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ syndrome. Ramesh’s statement in Beijing that India’s security establishment and Home Ministry were “paranoid”, “alarmist” and (…)

• Shocking!

  21 May 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The gruesome killing of three—a girl and two young men—at Mehrana, a village near Mathura on the UP-Rajasthan border on March 27 has spread shock waves.
  The inhumanity of the lynching of the three on the order of the village panchayat brings out the grotesque dimension of the prevailing social inequity in our country. The original report said that the girl had eloped with one of the young men, while the other had helped them to go away. The girl belonged to a Jat family while the (…)

• On 65th Anniversary of Victory over Fascism in WW II

  21 May 2010

  (On May 9 this year the world marked the sixtyfifth anniversary of Victory over Fascism, the menace that threatened the entire globe in the forties of the last century. The event was befittingly observed with a spectacular military parade at Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 emphasising East-West military cooperation that helped defeat fascism in Europe—for the first time ever, serving US, British, French and Polish troops as well as servicemen from several former Soviet states joined over 10,000 (…)

• ‘Marching... to keep Hope Alive for Us All’

  21 May 2010, by Arundhati Roy

  [On Arundhati Roy’s Essay on Maoists in Chhattisgarh
  Noted author Arundhati Roy’s 32-page essay on Maoists in Chhattisgarh—“Walking With The Comrades” (Outlook, March 29, 2010)—has caused ripples in different circles. Veteran journalist B.G. Verghese wrote a piece—“Daylight At The Thousand-Star Hotel” (Outlook, May 3, 2010)—criticising Arundhati’s essay. Thereafter former Secretary, Union Ministry of Rural Development, and architect of ‘Operation Barga’ in West Bengal, D. (…)

• Daylight At The Thousand-Star Hotel

  21 May 2010, by B.G. Verghese

  Roy’s distorted Maoist idyll aside, tribals are non-development’s casualties
  The CRPF massacre in Dantewada was brutal though avoidable, with two beheadings thrown in for bestiality. The Rammohan inquiry will tell us more about what happened. It was done, Arundhati Roy informs us (Walking With The Comrades, March 29), by “Gandhians with a gun”, with the timely reminder that there is no humbug about her Maoist Gandhians. They fight to protect beautiful tribal homelands against the state, (…)

• Denizens of the Other India

  21 May 2010, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  Ms Arundhati Roy’s “Walking With The Comrades” (Outlook, March 29, 2010) is one of the finest pieces of political travelogue in the current Indo-English literature. It compares well with the classic socio-political writings about the Chinese Revolution like Red Star Over China, Fan Shen, The Scalpel and the Sword and the like. Any convulsive political event does produce such literature from the pens of sensitive and empathic writers.
  That such a piece would create discomfort and (…)

• Where is Brahmeshwar Singh ‘The Great’?: Myth of Misuse of Laws meant for the Protection of Dalits and Tribals

  21 May 2010, by Subhash Gatade

  Is the law supposedly meant for the protection of Dalits and tribals put to misuse?
  It is a theme which recurs regularly in the discussions engaged in by the chattering classes of the country. While nobody can deny that frivolous cases are not filed under this Act, the manner in which the issue gets raised creates an impression that the only ‘use’ of this law is its ‘misuse’. Neither the members of our polity nor the articulate sections of our society seem ready to go for a reality (…)

• Afghanistan - Guarantees are the Best Way Out

  21 May 2010, by H K Dua

  Afghanistan has always been a prisoner of its geography and history and this imponderable has blocked its emergence as an independent and sovereign nation with a will of its own. Its strategic location could have been an asset for the region and the world; on the contrary, it has turned out to be the cause of its troubles and long spells of political instability.
  Other nations have often found it tempting to meddle in Afghanistan’s affairs and play games—great and not so great—on its (…)

• Back to Market Fundamentalism: The Myth of Inclusive Budget

  21 May 2010, by K B Saxena

  The changes introduced in the strategy of growth during the past two years had created an impression that politics has triumphed over economics in the sense that the concerns of the poorer sections of society have prevailed over the ambitions of economists and the dominant social groups to pursue an investment led model embedded in the primacy of the market and withdrawal of the state pursued since the onset of the reforms. As these changes had come about in the wake of the collapse of the (…)