Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Smitu Kothari Is No More

  2 April 2009

  Distinguished environmentalist and prominent scholar-activist Smitu Kothari is no more. He passed away at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on March 23.
  Smitu, 59, was attending a Delhi Solidarity Group meeting at the Indian Social Institute in the Capital on March 20 when he suffered severe chest pain; he was rushed to the AIIMS but later discharged from there as his ECG was found to be normal. However, according to a release issue by the Delhi Solidarity (…)

• On People‘s Movement at Singur and Mainstream

  2 April 2009, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  COMMUNICATION
  This has reference to Mr D.P. Sen‘s piece entitled “Mainstream and Nano Car Project of the Tatas at Singur” published in Mainstream (March 14, 2009). I am not surprised to go through this fairly provocative comment of Mr Sen. Without meaning any disrespect to anybody, one can state a general proposition regarding the neo-elites of Bengal. The real elites of Kolkata society where the landed-gentry—the zamindars, pattanidars and other big tenure holders having widespread (…)

• Momentous Victory for Pakistani People

  21 March 2009, by SC

  It has indeed been a momentous victory for the people of Pakistan. While the pre-poll political alignments and realignments as well as seat-sharing problems plus inner-party dissidence and bickerings (alongside blatantly communal pronouncements by at least one notable person in the electoral fray) on the national plane hog the headlines in our newspapers every day, these literally pale into insignificance before the latest extraordinary developments in our northwestern neighbouring state (…)

• In Defence of Professor Lotika Sarkar

  21 March 2009

  Professor Lotika Sarkar is a widely-known pioneer in the fields of law, women’s studies and human rights. She taught criminal law and conflict of laws at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and has been an active member of the Indian Law Institute. She was a member of the Government of India‘s Committee on the Status of Women in India and has been a founding member of several institutions—the Indian Association for Women Studies and the Centre for Women‘s Development Studies. At the age (…)

• New Focus—Dynamic Paradigm—and New Accountability for Parliamentary Polls

  21 March 2009, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Elections are for Parliament not for constituencies or parties. We need Members of Parliament, not of constituencies but to represent the nation, not to indulge in vocal magnum battles to earn more emoluments and power but fighters for the common good of the country.
  Parliamentary elections are coming close upon the nation. In these elections once, periodically, the little Indian matters. Winston Churchill wrote:
  At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man (…)

• Meaning of ‘Instability’

  21 March 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The general elections have already come and the political parties have been getting ready how they will enter the mass campaign in the next two months or so. Here is an election that has been forced upon us because the parties that returned to the Lok Sabha could not elect a leader from among themselves who could command the majority in the Lower House of Parliament, and as such its leader, I.K. Gujral, had to tell the President that he had ceased to command the majority that he had enjoyed (…)

• On Rammanohar Lohia’s 99th Birth Anniversary

  21 March 2009

  The birth centenary celebrations of Dr Rammanohar Lohia, the stormy petrel of the Indian socialist movement, one of the most talented and versatile personalities in the freedom struggle, and a profound, innovative and original socialist thinker, are to start from March 23, his ninetyninth birth anniversary. Dr Lohia was born at Akbarpur, Faizabad district, UP on March 23, 1910. Since his birthday coincided with the day of martyrdom of three of the country’s finest revolutionary freedom (…)

• Meaning of Modern Civilisation

  21 March 2009, by Rammanohar Lohia

  I once asked a philosopher from America, Scott Buchanan, what modern civilisation meant. At that time stood before me the tall and graceful buildings of Paris and there moved before me the pageant of Parisian men and women with their health and beauty of body and I felt sad because I thought of conditions obtaining in my own country and in Asia and Africa generally. The question was even more of a reverie. What is the secret of this modern civilisation? Wherein lies its mystery? What is it (…)

• Politics of Succession

  21 March 2009, by Rammanohar Lohia

  Barring us, Socialists, all Opposition politics in the country today have degenerated into succession politics.
  Opposition parties seem to have decided that the task of changing the attitudes of the people is far too difficult for them; or will at any rate take a lot more time than they think they can spare. The Prime Minister, according to them, is old and the Congress Party will soon have to find a successor to him. Who this successor will be is an open question—at least, so it (…)

• Dr Lohia—Our Revolutionary Mentor

  21 March 2009, by Rajindar Sachar

  On Dr Lohia’s birthday, we remember him with love and affection and as one of our top leaders of the socialist movement. He had a many-faceted personality. He was different from our other leades like JP. We had a reverence the JP, a certain kind of awe in his presence. There was no question of levity or extra talk—it was only the vision of a just socialist society that we listened to. But with Dr Lohia, while philosophical, political theories of socialist thought were no doubt a constant (…)