Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• India Closes Ranks with Hamid Karzai

  21 May 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent visit to New Delhi lasting two days took place at a defining moment in the Afghan civil war. Karzai is about to embark on a crucial peace and reconciliation project. He just completed talks in three important regional capitals—Islamabad, Tehran and Beijing—explaining his strategy, for the success of which he needs the understanding from the regional powers. Tehran and Beijing were forthcoming in their support of the Afghan Government whereas Islamabad (…)

• Bribing Iraqi Officials, US-Style

  21 May 2010, by Benjamin Todd

  Executives at the US security firm, Blackwater, approved secret payments of about one million dollars to Iraqi officials to “silence their criticism” after company guards killed 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007, according to the New York Times.
  Citing interviews with four unnamed former Blackwater executives, the newspaper disclosed that the company’s President at the time, Gary Jackson, approved the bribes.
  Money was sent from neighbouring Jordan to their top company manager (…)

• Death Sentence to Ajmal Kasab

  10 May 2010, by SC

  In the end the Indian judicial system and democracy have triumphed. Ajmal Amir Kasab, the young Pakistani who with his group of motivated terrorists, trained in and supervised from Pakistani soil, carried out the audacious Mumbai terror attack in November 2008, killing in the process 166 persons, both Indians and foreigners, and who was personally responsible for 72 deaths due to indiscriminate firing, has been convicted and sentenced to death by Special Sessions Judge M.L. Tahiliyani in (…)

• Parliament and the People

  10 May 2010, by Surendra Mohan

  A cut motion was moved by the Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha on April 27 to ensure that the government is censured on the issue of raising the prices of petrol and diesel. Simultaneously, 13 Opposition parties called for a Bharat bandh to protest against price rise. These parties excluded the parties in the National Democratic Alliance. Earlier, on April 21, the NDA had organised a big public demonstration on the issue of rising prices. While the bandh had a partial success, the cut (…)

• Can the Left become the National Alternative?

  10 May 2010, by Chaturanan Mishra

  The country is heading towards a political vacuum in the sense that the two national level parties—the Congress and BJP—are weakening day by day. The Congress, a secular party, is no longer in a position to mobilise the masses to protect their rights, even the legal rights, and the bureaucracy has become so much anti-people and corrupt that even the funds sanctioned for the public do not reach them. Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister had said that only 16 paise out of one rupee reach the (…)

• Bright or Ugly?

  10 May 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  With his return from the Dhaka Summit, Rajiv Gandhi’s budget for foreign tours for the current year is exhausted, the most impressive that any Prime Minister of India has undertaken in the first year in office. The time for drawing up the balance-sheet for the year has not come, since the over-publicised stop-over in New Delhi by General Zia on December 16 is yet to be assessed.
  The Dhaka Summit which institutionalised South Asian Regional Cooperation by setting up its Association is (…)

• Potentialities of South Asian Identity

  10 May 2010, by Balraj Puri

  The potentialities of South Asian identity were unfolded in a three-day SAARC writers and literature conference which I attended recently in Delhi. It became fairly obvious that bilateral disputes, which have retarded the growth of the region, are cut to size when viewed in the context of the SAARC. Moreover, the South Asian identity can be better developed through non-official efforts than by formal government efforts.
  The delegates to the conference became conscious and emphasised (…)

• What is Violence? What is Non-Violence?

  10 May 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  Violence is committed not just when someone physically attacks another person or fires a gun. Violence is not just an action but a way of thinking. Violence is committed whenever someone plans to harm others or deprive others for self-gain. When big companies and politicians in collusion with them conspire to grab huge areas of land and destroy the livelihood of millions of villagers in the process, then these companies and politicians are certainly committing large-scale violence even (…)

• Peasants in India

  10 May 2010, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive incursion into the agrarian sector per se. The reason is the chimerical idea of (…)

• Tagore: An Introduction in the West

  10 May 2010, by Mithun Dey

  (May 9 this year marks Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s 149th birth anniversary—on that day will commence the yearlong celebrations to commemorate the poet’s 150th birth anniversary in 2011. On this occasion we are publishing the following articles to remember him and offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory.)
  Rabindranath Tagore’s name is synonymous with Bengali culture. His prolific outpouring of poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories and essays are golden threads woven into the (…)