Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Nikhilda

  1 November 2009, by Chanchal Sarkar

  When I first came to work in Delhi the most respected journalistic figure here was Sir Usha Nath Sen, one of the founders of the Associated Press of India which eventually became the PTI (Press Trust of India). Sir U.N. once told me of his guru K.C. Roy, the real founder of the API, that in any matter concerning the Government of India, in Delhi or Simla, K.C. Roy could figure out exactly with whom the matter rested and who would take the decision.
  Delhi has grown exponentially since (…)

• Regrettable Lapse

  1 November 2009, by Nilokheri Ranbir Singh

  COMMUNICATION
  I am grateful to you for publishing my piece “Unfinished Agenda of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj: Fifty Years of Panchayati Raj” (Mainstream, October 10, 2009). But in this context I must bring to your kind notice a serious lapse that I have inadvertently committed due to the hurry in sending the piece to you for ensuring its publication in the Gandhi Anniversary Issue. It is the omission of the following reference:
  Partha Nath Mukherji, ‘Participatory Democratisation: (…)

• Making a Farce of Vulgarity, too

  1 November 2009, by T J S George

  Mukesh Ambani’s salary is Rs 44.2 crores a year, about three-and-a-half crores a month. In a country where the poor outnumber the well-to-do, that seems vulgar. On the other hand, the big salary works out to 0.23 per cent of the Ambani companies’ net profits. That doesn’t look vulgar.
  Sun TV’s Kalanithi Maran and wife Kavery take a salary of Rs 37.08 crores each. That works out to 16.96 per cent of their net profits. Is that vulgar? Anil Ambani’s salary is Rs 30.02 crores a year, or (…)

• A Nowhere Approach to India’s Nowhere Revolution

  1 November 2009, by Ajay K. Mehra

  The political, social and administrative discourse on Naxalism, India’s hydra-headed ‘nowhere revolution’1 , that in the past five years has spread from ten States to twenty, from 168 districts to 223 (out of about 626) and 2000 police stations, is turning queer. With both the Indian state and the Maoists flexing their muscles and daring each other with their might, the space for sane speaking, dialogue and solution, if at all there was ever, appears invisible. An attack on intellectual (…)

• Indian State and the Spectre of Naxalism

  1 November 2009, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Very recently, our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated once again that the Maoists pose the greatest internal security threat to the country. The Central Government is going to launch the biggest-ever operation against the Maoists, Operation Green Hunt, devised by the Home Ministry. The operation will be launched by some 70,000 paramilitary forces in 11 strategic districts along the borders of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in addition to simultaneous operations through the dense forests in (…)

• Musahar-Maoist Combination: Are the Poorest Asserting themselves in Bihar?

  1 November 2009, by A K Biswas

  The latest round of agrarian violence reported from Khagaria district’s Icharwa char under Alauli Police Station1 of Bihar, disturbing though it is, it seems, is a powerful attempt by the weakest to ultimately defend themselves by the last option open and/or available to them. The char land in the riverine has resulted in bloodshed: 16 deaths of backward caste members including children. The attackers were Musahars, Bihar’s most illiterate and deprived caste accounting for a two million (…)

• Citizens Initiative for Peace and the Maoist Challenge

  1 November 2009, by Nandita Haksar

  I have read the Resolution (entitled “Stop offensive Hold Unconditional Dialogue” in Mainstream) made by the Citizens Initiative for Peace very carefully and I would like to raise some questions about the list of six demands that have been formulated in the light of the discussion and debates around the question of the Indian State’s decision to deal with the “Naxalite problem” with brute military force.
  The Resolution has put forward six “simple yet urgent demands”. The demands are (…)

• After Indira Gandhi

  1 November 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Twenty years after her great father’s passing away, Indira Gandhi fell, her frail body riddled with the assasin’s bullets, in the winter morning of October 31, 1984.
  She died as she lived—taking danger as her constant companion. And she left behind a nation not only benumbed with searing sorrow but engulfed in insensate fratricidal violence, threatening the very unity of the country to defend which she faced martyrdom.
  This is not the moment to undertake an objective (…)

• to indira gandhi

  1 November 2009, by Sumit Chakravartty

  a year has passed
  without you;
  tears dry up
  on the surface,
  but the pain persists
  down below
  where my heart writhes
  like a wounded fawn
  as it dawns on me
  with every passing day:
  how much we lost
  by losing you.
  New Delhi October 31, 1985

• Remembering Indira Gandhi Today

  1 November 2009, by Sumit Chakravartty

  “The ‘Indira hatred’ slogan of her opponents has died with her, but for a long time the rallying cry in India was her call of ‘Garibi Hatao’ (end poverty). Witnesses bear testimony to the fact that where millions wept at her demise, beyond the family the sincerest tears were shed by the wretched and the poor who feel bereft because they believe that she had genuinely sought to give them succour and shield them against their oppressors.”
  The above lines were written by the outstanding (…)