Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Danger Signal from Bombay

  22 February 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The time has come when we have to seriously ask ourselves if we are really serious about preserving in one piece this Republic of India. Many in our country think that to talk about disintegration of the Indian Union is just a fantasy with an overdose of panic. They can’t take it that we may have taken the road to Bosnia.
  Three months ago, this impression was widespread. It can’t happen here—was the average Indian reaction when the mighty USSR fell apart without a whimper, and when (…)

• Inside Khadi, Khaki and Gabardine

  22 February 2010, by N A Karim

  A New Class of Politicians with their White Khadi Jibbas, Police Officers with their Well-starched Uniforms and Bureaucrats in their Neatly Tailored Gabardine Shutcoats together cheerfully Patronise Crime and Corruption in Modern India
  Now all, including the political class, are up in arms against the retired Haryana Director General of Police, S.P.S. Rathore, for the crimes he committed nineteen years ago. He could not have gone scot-free then for the rape of a 14-year-old promising (…)

• India’s Flawed Afghan Policy

  22 February 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  ([rouge]Afghan Peace Prospects after London Conferencerouge]
  [rouge]The following are two distinct viewpoints among the Indian strategic and foreign policy analysts on the peace prospects in Afghanistan following the London Conference, articulated of late in two different newspapers by two well-known experts on the subject. These are being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. —Editorrouge])
  On January 28 the region took a ride in the raft of optimism to (…)

• Obama’s Short-sighted Afghan Strategy

  22 February 2010, by Brahma Chellaney

  What US President Barack Obama’s adminis-tration has been pursuing in Afghanistan for the past one year has now received international imprimatur, thanks to the well-scripted London Conference. Four words sum up that strategy: surge, bribe and run. Obama has designed his twin troop surges not to militarily rout the Afghan Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Without a deal with Taliban commanders, the US cannot execute the ‘run’ part.
  The (…)

• Black and White

  18 February 2010, by SC

  The recent decision on the part of South Block to resume Indo-Pak talks, despite no visible signs from the side of Islamabad that it was taking tangible steps to dismantle the infrastructure of terror operating from within Pakistan and directed against India, has evoked mixed reactions in this country. The forces of subcontinental peace desiring friendship and amity with Pakistan have received a boost with this decision of the Indian Government; of course their position has always been (…)

• K.N. Raj Is No More

  18 February 2010

  Distinguished economist Kakkadan Nandanath Raj, 85, who contributed to the preparation of the First Five Year Plan (1951-56) at the age of 26 as an expert member of the Planning Commission, was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi and founded the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Kerala, passed away in Thiruvananthapuram on February 10. He had been keeping indifferent health for some time.
  Dr Raj, like former President K.R. Narayanan (with whom he had a close bond as (…)

• Sugar’s Bitter Policies

  18 February 2010, by Kobad Ghandy

  The following article on the present rise in prices of sugar has been written by Kobad Ghandy, the CPI (Maoist) leader now lodged in Ward No. 8 of Tihar Jail No. 3. Though suffering from prostrate cancer and incarcerated in prison he retains an alert mind as is reflected in the following article sent specially for publication in this journal.
  At Rs 50 per kg sugar prices have never been so high. With sugar prices soaring, prices of all sugar linked products—sweets, mithais, tea etc.—have (…)

• Alternative Agricultural Policy in the Specific Context of Climate Change

  18 February 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  Much before the adverse impacts of climate change started manifesting themselves, it had become evident in the interests of equality, justice and sustainability that certain significant changes need to be made in agricultural policy. With the increasing manifestation of adverse impacts of climate change and warnings of worse to come, the urgency of these changes has become much more pronounced.
  If we look not just at agricultural but the overall change in policy, it is very clear (…)

• Statehood for Telangana: The Current Stalemate

  18 February 2010, by C.H. Hanumantha Rao

  The following article has been sent by the author for publication in this journal for the benefit of its readers. He is a follow-up to his earlier article, “Regional Disparities, Smaller States and Statehood for Telangana”, published in Mainstream (March 7, 2009).
  The newly created smaller States, namely, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, have achieved much higher growth rates in their GSDP than the targets set for the Tenth Five Year Plan, whereas the growth rates achieved by their (…)

• Gandhi’s Champaran Struggle

  18 February 2010, by Girish Mishra

  Two epoch-making events took place in 1917. The first was the Bolshevik Revolution in November that ended the Czarist rule over Russia and heralded the dawn of socialism in the world. The second event that did not immediately appear very important to people outside its locale proved to be the beginning of the end of foreign rule over India and sounded the death-knell of British imperialism. It took place in Champaran, a district of Bihar, about which not much was then known in other parts of (…)