Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Measures for Promoting Exports in the Short and Medium Terms

  27 March 2010, by Anshuman Gupta

  India has emerged victorious in the recent recession, which started in the US and engulfed the whole world in a short span of time. India could be able to secure a respectable rate of growth of 6.7 per cent during 2008-09, which is the second highest in world after China. This was mainly because of the domestic-led demand of the Indian economy and stimulus measures initiated by the government at the fiscal and monetary policy levels. However, the exports of India suffered a great deal as a (…)

• Political Economy of Judicial Precedent—Delay and Unaccountability

  27 March 2010, by K G Somasekharan Nair

  Law courts in Britain, their Jonathan Brother America and some Eastern countries, believing White is right, are being overwhelmed by the weight of pending cases and the people despair over the despicable delay in the administration of justice. In accordance with the increase in population, they enhanced the number of prodigal courts, but when the number of courts was increasing in arithmetical progression, the number of pending cases increased in geometric progression. Now Western judges are (…)

• State Response to Refugees in South Asia

  27 March 2010, by C. Lalruatfeli

  BOOK REVIEW
  Exile and Belonging: Refugees and State Policy in South Asia by Pia Oberoi; Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 2006.
  Exile and Belonging: Refugees and State Policy in South Asia deals with the state response to refugees in South Asia. It focuses on the responses of the four major South Asian states. The author, Pia Oberoi, examines the changing relationship between South Asian states and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She picks up six major (…)

• Biological Warfare and Genetic Engineering

  27 March 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  Biological warfare is known to be one of the most destructive yet secretive forms of warfare. In fact its strength derives to a large extent from the fact that it can unleash so much damage without the identity of a specific attack, not to mention the attacker, becoming clear at all. Biological warfare (also called germ-warfare) can be used to spread disease among human beings or destroy crops on a large scale. Protection against such an attack is extremely difficult, specially in the case (…)

• Bhagat Singh : A Tribute

  27 March 2010, by Bimal Prasad

  [bleu]Seventynine years ago on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, were executed by the British Raj at Lahore Central Jail. On this occasion we reproduce excerpts from an AIR broadcast on Bhagat Singh to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their martyrdom by the eminent historian and retired Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Bimal Prasad. The text of the broadcast was carried in Mainstream (March 28, 1981).bleu]
  As Bhagat Singh, flanked by (…)

• Battle-lines

  20 March 2010, by SC

  Parliament went into recess on March 16. But before that the government decided to back off in the Lok Sabha on introducing the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010. The Bill’s introduction has been deferred due to the spirited opposition from the BJP and the Left and both were prepared to call a division on the legislation. But the government’s decision to this effect was also prompted by the low attendance of the MPs belonging to the ruling UPA in the Lower House—an embarrassment (…)

• Women in Panchayats: The Path Ahead

  20 March 2010, by Usha Narayanan

  Now that the Women’s Reservation Bill has been passed in the Rajya Sabha, we are reproducing the following write-up based on the speech the author, the wife of former President K.R. Narayanan, delivered at the inauguration of a National Workshop on “Training Women in Panchayats—Looking Back and Forward” (New Delhi] October 31, 1996). It was the success of women’s one-third representation in the Panchayats that influenced politicians (like Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, for example) to comprehend the (…)

• In the Name of Woman Unite the Adi Shakti, do not Divide it

  20 March 2010, by Suvrokamal Dutta

  The Indian nation and parliamentary democracy are today passing through huge crises of an unprecedented nature never seen before. The issue behind the whole crises today is sadly the issue of woman who for ages has been a force of unity and not division in the family, society and/or state. The woman, who has been projected in Indian scriptures as the Adi-Shakti, Aad-Nareswar or for that matter Shiv-Shakti, has become a huge contention of debate in the name of women’s liberation among the (…)

• On Rammanohar Lohia’s Birth Centenary

  20 March 2010, by SC

  The birth centenary of Dr Rammanohar Lohia, the stormy petrel of the Indian socialist movement, one of the most talented and versatile personalities in the freedom struggle, and a profound, innovative and original socialist thinker, falls on March 23. Dr Lohia was born at Akbarpur, Faizabad district, UP on March 23, 1910. Since his birthday coincided with the day of martyrdom of three of the country’s finest revolutionary freedom fighters—Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru (who were executed (…)

• Left Unity: Lohia’s Approach

  20 March 2010, by Ayub Syed, Ravindranath

  An encounter with the socialist leader would be rather extraordinary without some rough weather but we were not prepared for the squall we ran into the moment we sat down with him in his well-appointed drawing room. He said he would talk only in Hindi. When we remonstrated that one of us had been in the North for only three years, he said he had learnt German in Berlin in three months: “One learns a language only under compulsion.” Finally, he agreed to let us discuss half the questions in (…)