Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Two Events in Tagore’s Life

  10 May 2010, by A K Biswas

  Attending a Namasudra Conference, Banned from Entering Puri’s Jagannath Temple
  It may not be news to many that the entry of the Tagores of Calcutta was banned in the Jagannath temple of Puri. At least many might have heard in whispers but disbelieved and dismissed it as slanderous gossip. Or not much importance was attached to it by them. However, hardly anybody would have heard in wild gossips that Rabindranath Tagore attended a caste conference which, ipso facto, would cause revulsion (…)

• Impending Constitutional Crisis in Nepal

  10 May 2010, by Aparijita Kashyap, Satish Kumar

  The stage seems to be ready for a constitutional crisis in Nepal. The deadline for enacting the new Constitution is on May 28, 2010. The preparation for making the Constitution seems to be half done. Prachanda is strongly against the partial enactment of the Constitution. This will lead to the derailment of the constitutional process. It is a well-known fact that the people of Nepal have been tricked numerous times in the name of the Constitution. But earlier attempts were being made by (…)

• China’s Growing Influence in Nepal: Implications on Tibetan Refugees

  10 May 2010, by Kriti Singh

  There are more than 20,000 Tibetans residing in Nepal, living with no defined legal status as the Nepalese law does not recognise the rights of refugees under the principal treaties that govern their status under international law. Provided they have a Nepalese “refugee identity certificate” (RC), Tibetans who arrived before 1989 can remain in Nepal with certain limited rights. Most live in an uneasy state of subsistence, principally in a small number of isolated settlements in the Kathmandu (…)

• State of the IR Discipline in India: A Debate

  10 May 2010, by Seema Narain

  An informal round table was held at the Department of Political Science at Delhi-University to discuss ways of promoting the IR discipline in India. This discussion was a follow-up action of the workshop held on International Studies in India. at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore., March 25-26, 2009.1 This report needs to be published in order to share some of the concerns expressed at the roundtable and stir a debate on this very vital issue in (…)

• State, Development and Communities: Anthropological Thresholds

  10 May 2010, by J.J. Roy Burman

  The study of the communities has always been in the throes of anthropology. The Darwinian influence compelled the discipline to place native communities in the scale of human evolution. Prehistoric archaeology or palaeoanthropology, genetics and blood-group studies or biometrics and cultural and social anthropology became the handmaid of colonial or state administrators to focus on the micro-studies so as to provide micro-solutions. The micro-studies came to be considered as holistic studies (…)

• Indian Polity—from Integration to Fragmentation

  10 May 2010, by Ranbir Singh

  The Indian Constitution, which came into force on January 26, 1950, had been designed by its makers to integrate the 562 princely states that had signed the Instrument of Accession into India after the strenuous and skilful efforts of the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel. Some of the larger among them, like Hyderabad and Mysore, were made Part-B States and their rulers, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Mysore, were designated as Rajpramukhs. Some small but contiguous princely (…)

• Japan - Will Hatoyama’s $ 1 trillion Budget Resuscitate the Economy?

  10 May 2010, by Rajaram Panda

  On March 24, 2010, the Japanese Diet passed a record 92.3 trillion yen ($1 trillion) Budget, seeking to underpin a fragile recovery in the world’s second largest economy. The record Budget reflected Prime Minister Hatoyama’s promise to cut wasteful spending on public works and boost funding for social welfare. As a result, spending on public works projects will drop by a record 18.3 per cent to 5.8 trillion yen, which is the lowest in 32 years.
  Though Hatoyama’s aim is to kick-start (…)

• Am I a Maoist?

  10 May 2010, by Gladson Dungdung

  I appeared in public life through my human rights work, writings and speeches. However, I reached to a larger audience when I got a chance to appear in CNN-IBN and NDTV-24×7 debates on the issue of Naxalism last year. After these debates, I got immense positive and negative responses from across the country. I was upset for sometime precisely because of the most negative responses I got from the youth who are running behind the market forces unknowingly. They ruthlessly questioned me about (…)

• Appeal to PM to Intervene in Manipur Forthwith, Defuse Tensions

  10 May 2010

  (The following are an appeal to the PM by a group of concerned citizens, their press release, and a letter to the Manipur Assembly Speaker by six Independent Naga MLAs announcing their decision to resign from the legislature in view of the police firing on civilians in the Naga areas of Manipur for having gathered to welcome the NSCN (IM) leader, Th Muivah, who was to visit his native village in Manipur.)
  May 5, 2010
  To
  Dr Manmohan Singh
  Prime Minister of India
  New Delhi
  Fax No. (…)

• India and the US Policy in Afghanistan

  10 May 2010, by Bashir Mohammad

  By now it is as clear as daylight what the Americans are up to in Afghanistan.
  In case Talibanisation grips Afghanistan (which is inevitable if the US plan to negotiate with the “moderate” Taliban by using the good offices of its client state, Pakistan, and the Pak intelligence network, the ISI, in particular, bears fruit) and as a corollary Islamic extremism sweeps Pakistan, India should expect more terror attacks from Pakistan-based groups once the Taliban finds sufficient space to (…)