Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Take Timely Action to Prevent Uttar Pradesh’s Nandigram

  26 September 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  At a time when it is being widely realised that the displacement of farmers cultivating fertile and irrigated land should be minimised as much as possible, it is shocking that farmers cultivating nearly 650 acres of fertile, irrigated land in an agriculturally rich area of Kushinagar district (UP) are threatened by a project involving the construction of a huge statue and related activities. Social activists who have inquired into this so-called Maitreyi project have found (…)

• Austerity Drive

  26 September 2009, by Suhas Borker

  come share a single course of gruel with me
  I shall be waiting outside my hovel
  not very far from where you live
  to welcome you with a v sign.
  come this will help you show up
  a mindset that never mirrors
  a faceless down-and-under like me
  but don’t worry I shall keep
  a clean towel ready for you
  to throw up my insipid
  gruel of salt and grain.
  but please come by 6 in the morning
  because I have to leave for work by 6.15
  for if I am late I shall lose my days wages
  and (…)

• Beyond the Drama

  21 September 2009, by SC

  While the BJP’s victories in the by-elections to the State Assemblies of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have somewhat lifted the drooping spirits of the party faithfuls, the Trinamul-Congress combine’s electoral success in ousting the Left Front from the Siliguri Municipal Corporation in West Bengal has given a further blow to the CPM in particular thus reinforcing the idea of a ‘change’ in the State’s governance. However, these are of peripheral interest at the national level. What (…)

• Dealing with China on the Border

  21 September 2009, by Chandra Sen

  Regardless of the statements by the Ministry of External Affairs, including the assertions of External Affairs S.M. Krishna, that the situation on the Sino-Indian border was “peaceful”, the fact is that recent Chinese postures on the border are a matter of concern for the average Indian. This concern springs from the ground reality that perhaps for the first time in many years Chinese incursions have been reported from all sectors around the same time and there is much strength in the (…)

• Judge Sonia Sotomayor

  21 September 2009, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Great Judge Sotomayor, I salute you. Why? You are a super symbol of gender power, a fine paradigm of feminine title to judicial authority to dispense justice at the national level, a glory not only for the womanhood of the USA but a symbol of the woman’s super-stature in the sex performance in all humanity. You are the robed sex on the Supreme Court Bench, an inspiration for women in all countries now neglected because the masculine gender occupies an unjust majority in all the three great (…)

• Something Rotten in the State of Gujarat

  21 September 2009, by Badri Raina

  I have supped full with horrors;
  Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
  Cannot once start me. (Macbeth Modi)
  I
  Indeed, great is the temptation to write this account wholly in Shakesperian quotation.
  Four new skeletons now rattle for justice in the Modi cupboard. And well might he be saying to himself:
  ...the time has been,
  That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
  And there an end; but now they rise again,
  With twenty mortal murders on their (…)

• Andhra also going the Dynastic Way?: The Miracle of Indian Democracy Gets Further Strengthened!

  21 September 2009, by N A Karim

  Politics everywhere, particularly in liberal democracies is all about getting power and retaining it as long as it is possible. In India where the feudal culture is still strong, the power thus gained is cleverly passed on to sons and daughters and even widows of the deceased who have been groomed for the job or not, whether they deserve it or not.
  This tradition began from the very beginning with Motilal Nehru as a shrewd and successful lawyer who gifted his fabulously built Anand (…)

• Of Desire, Logic and Social Conscience

  21 September 2009, by T J S George

  The Buddha describes lust/desire as the origin of suffering. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states pointblank that a person consists of desires. For Manu, desire is one of humankind’s ten vices. Every source of wisdom warns us against desire, greed, avarice, the craving for more and more.
  Yet, desire drives us. The latest example of this is cricket star Harbhajan Singh driving an unlicensed Hummar vehicle in Chandigarh. It may seem like a minor matter, but it is a symptom of what seems to (…)

• To Talk about Austerity . . .!

  21 September 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The air is thick with talk about the economic crisis facing the country. The Finance Minister has called it “a grave economic crisis”. “We have not experienced anything similar in the history of independent India,” he has said.
  In Parliament, in newspaper offices, in the university campus, in Chambers of Commerce, the talk centres round the urgent need to borrow, to contract loans so that our economy could be sustained and the nation does not collapse under debts.
  In other (…)

• Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009: The Story of a Missed Opportunity

  21 September 2009, by Muchkund Dubey

  Both the Houses of the Indian Parliament have passed the Bill for providing free and compulsory education for children in the age-group of 6 to 14. There have been extensive debates on the extent to which this Bill will help in implementing the right to education as provided in Article 21-A of the Indian Constitution. What has been ignored in these discussions is that the Bill as adopted misses the excellent opportunity provided to the nation for bringing about a radical transformation of (…)