Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Indians Down Under

  7 July 2009, by Badri Raina

  The Kangaroos have been behaving badly. Hopping mad, you might say.
  This time not on the cricket field, but on the streets, and inside Indian homes and hostel rooms down under.
  A number of Indian students studying at Aussie universities have been at the receiving end of hate-violence from young, vigilante gangs—all white and anglo-saxon.
  They scream “you Indians, go home” and suchlike.
  All very nastily racist, but racism strangely not directed at other than (…)

• Marxism in India: Need for Total Rectification

  7 July 2009, by Bipan Chandra

  [gris]The following article was published in Seminar in June 1974. In view of its relevance at this juncture it is being reproduced with due acknowledgement and the permission of the author, the distinguished historian and Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.gris]
  Marxism has been an active political and intellectual force in India for over 50 years now. One need not therefore apologise for an attempt to evaluate critically the record of the activities of the Indian (…)

• China : Who’s Counter-revolutionary?

  7 July 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Sometime ago, I was attending an interesting discussion on the subject of a national alternative. The discussion concentrated largely on the basic approach to the malaise of the present order, and was bereft of the excitement of a Rajiv-versus-V.P. Singh debate. Many distinguished scholars, political and social scientists participated and so did some political leaders.
  One of the party leaders began his peroration with: ‘I am not an intellectual, I am a political activist.” Looking (…)

• Limits of Growth-centric Approach in Targeting Poverty and Inequality

  7 July 2009, by Satyaki Roy

  Book Review
  High growth, Rising Inequalities, Worsening Poverty: India’s ‘Development’ Experience by Kamala Nayan Kabra; Books for Change; 2008; pp. 130; Rs 190.
  The disconnect between high growth and poverty reduction in India is precisely because of a strong belief in official circles that growth itself can take care of the issues related to poverty and inequality. And the belief itself stems from a specific political economy of understanding and defining poverty. This is what Prof (…)

• Internationalisation of the Arctic: A Move Fraught with Dangers

  7 July 2009, by Benjamin Todd

  On April 29 this year the eight Arctic Council Ministers signed the Tromso Declaration, The Declaration is a guideline for the work in the Arctic Council in the next two years.
  The Arctic Council has been meeting at the Foreign Ministers level every second year, approving projects and guidelines. However, due to the increased activity and interest in the Arctic, the Tromso meeting in Norway decided that the Council would henceforth meet at the political level once a year. (…)

• Eyeless in Tackling the Maoist Problem

  2 July 2009, by SC

  While the Lalgarh operation involving the State and Central forces in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district is still on with the security forces unable to apprehend a single Maoist of eminence in the area, the people of the region are being subjected to extreme forms of hardship, attacks and torture as well as grave human rights violations.
  Meanwhile the Centre has now officially banned the CPI (Maoist) as a terrorist organisation. Coming in the midst of the Lalgarh operation this (…)

• Swine Flu and Indian Strategy to Combat the Menace

  2 July 2009, by A K Biswas

  The World Health Organisation has issued a warning that swine flu has assumed the threat of a pandemic disease, which is likely to visit scores of countries across the continents. The Government of India has invoked provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897 to fight the impending catastrophe. Interestingly, the colonial authorities had enacted the law following the outbreak of plague that travelled from Munchuria to Bombay in 1896. It danced through the vast subcontinent with unfettered (…)

• Report of the All-India Fact-finding Team on Lalgarh

  2 July 2009

  [rouge]West Bengal’s Lalgarh is very much in the news due to the para-military operation undertaken there by the Central and State forces to ostensibly fight the Maoists and eliminate them. In this context we present here a report of an all-India fact-finding team on the developments in Lalgarh much before the military operation began there on June 18, 2009. It gives a clear idea of the problems the people face in the area.rouge]
  1. An all-India fact-finding mission consisting of ten (…)

• Diffident Us versus Combative Them

  2 July 2009, by T J S George

  By any standard, the violence against Indian students in Australia is nasty business. What lends an astonishing edge to it is the Indian Government’s routine, pedestrian, unfeeling handling of it. Indeed, non-assertiveness seems to be a characteristic of the Manmohan-Sonia leadership.
  By contrast, Australia took a combative position. First, police bosses remained almost indifferent, refusing to see any racial angle in the repeated attacks on Indian students. At the political level, (…)

• Yes, You Can: Signs of Hope in Obama’s Message - An Indian Muslim’s Response

  2 July 2009, by Iqbal A Ansari

  Dear President Obama,
  Greetings from an Indian Muslim, a member of one of the non-majority communities of the ‘Muslim world’, who did not find any direct mention in your powerful, moving speech, delivered in Cairo on June 4, 2009 though Af-Pak region did figure as an area of your major concern. Listening to your speech live on television, I was touched by your sincere search for a new beginning in America’s relations with Muslims and Islam.
  Since in your speeches you often (…)