Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Chinese Soldiers on Indian Borders

  26 September 2009, by Harish Chandola

  The media these days are full of stories of the Chinese Army’s violation of India’s northern borders. Of late it spoke of violation in the central sector. I live in a border town in this sector. Before one believes these stories of violations, one should have an idea of the border topography. The border, not surveyed and not demarcated yet, for it to be accepted by both sides, runs along the highest ridges, across which it is impossible to see. A newspaper story quoted a villager seeing (…)

• China and Xinjiang

  26 September 2009, by Shankari Sundararaman

  As China approaches the 60th anniversary of Communist rule, the issues that have challenged its internal consolidation are once again taking centrestage. While the country has been showing remarkable economic progress and has also taken on a regional leadership role, in terms of balancing its internal problems China will remain a critical region to watch. Barely two months after the outbreak of ethnic violence in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, another spate of violence that erupted (…)

• How to Minimise Displacement through Alternative Patterns of Development

  26 September 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  Displacement has become a leading source of discontent and impoverishment in India and many other developing countries. In the case of some vulnerable groups like tribals, it is perhaps the leading source of poverty and discontent resulting in widespread violence in several places. Thus policies which promote large-scale displacement not only increase poverty, these are also a threat to peace and democracy.
  Unfortunately it has been taken for granted by many senior policy-makers that (…)

• Political and Social Legacy of Michael Jackson

  26 September 2009, by Namrata Goswami

  Michael Jackson’s musical message of social and political equality amongst races the world over influenced the political and social thinking of many around the world with a liberal ideology of progress, change, human emancipation and equality. Significantly, during the height of the Cold War, his song “We are the World” was popular in Eastern Europe and the USSR, to say nothing about the heart-beating popularity of his music album “Thriller” amongst the youth of these countries. Given his (…)

• The Ever Elusive Goal of Education for All

  26 September 2009, by N A Karim

  There is a significant sentence in the report of the Education Commission (1964-66), popularly known as the Kothari Commission: “India’s destiny is being shaped in her classrooms.” Indeed the statement of the Commission was inspired by an ideal situation in which education plays a decisive role in the development and destiny of the nation. The fact that the Commission gave the title ‘Education and Development’ to their monumental report of more than 800 pages revealed their vision of India (…)

• Proposed Reform in Higher Education by Yash Pal Report: A Critique

  26 September 2009, by Prasenjit Biswas

  The Professor Yash Pal Report (YPR) makes right noises about many of the inherently self-defeating practices, ideas and notions that have been the ‘ruling ideas’ of India’s higher education sector for the last four decades. The Report significantly persuades the existing university system and its ensemble of policy-makers, bureaucrats and teachers etc. to go for self-corrective measures that would redeem them from many a closure. As we go through the report, its frank and straightforward (…)

• Message of ’Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom’

  26 September 2009, by Rakesh Gupta

  Book Review
  Language and Politics in India by Asha Sarangi (ed.); Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 2009; pp. 431; Price: Rs 795.
  The book under review is published as a part of a series of Readers on specific themes in Political Science and Indian Politics. It has an Introduction, three parts with 4, 3 and 4 reproductions, a select bibliography, note on foreign and Indian contributors (most of them working in foreign universities), figures list and tables. The Introduction needs some (…)

• Af-Pak: The World’s Most Dangerous Place

  26 September 2009, by Manan Dwivedi

  One out of a myriad Political Contest Models developed by the arcane theorists, the present one posits a sanguine and diligent comprehension of the notion of a state actor pitted against the non-state actor in a Gladiatorial contest of gargantuan proportions. This used to be a quintessential mode of analysing the arcadia of conflict zones in the international statecraft. The Model delineated a Blitzkrieg scenario, wherein the non-state actors in a given nation-state strive to assess the (…)

• Beyond Social Exclusion

  26 September 2009, by J.J. Roy Burman

  The concept of Social Exclusion has been on the anvil of social sciences for over a decade or so. This is mainly so due to the mobilisations of the nation-states against embedded social inequalities. In a country like India, the drives against caste-based inequities, deprivations of the tribes and religious minorities have gained steep ascendance. The main idea behind such moves is that in order to combat such exclusions, the state must create and adopt inclusive policies—acts of positive (…)

• A Tribute to G.S. Bhargava

  26 September 2009

  Veteran journalist G.S. Bhargava is no more. He passed away in New Delhi on Tuesday (September 23) afternoon; he was 85 and is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter. The funeral took place at the Lodhi Road crematorium the same evening. Apart from his family members, relatives and close friends, Socialist leader Surendra Monhan and veteran journalist B.G. Verghese were among those present there to pay him their last respects.
  A prominent political commentator who wrote (…)