Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Lexicon of Insolence!

  21 December 2008, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  Politics of language and language of politics are two fascinating cousin disciplines in the larger sorority of political theory and practice, human behaviour and social anthropology.
  A language carries with it the basics of sometimes conscious but more often subconscious mind-set of a people of their fundamental political structure. A small illustration may clarify the point. We have been a Republic since January 26, 1950. But do any of the local languages, say, Bengali, Assomia, Hindi, (…)

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  Myth and Reality of Capitalism: Neo-Liberalism and Globalisation

  21 December 2008, by P R Dubhashi

  Prof Galbraith of Harvard University had been, through his copious and widely read books, a sustained critic of unbridled capitalism and its adverse consequences on the living of the common people. Thus in his celebrated book, The Affluent Society, he drew pointed attention to the glaring contradiction between private opulence and public squalor. In his New Industrial State, he showed how the operations of the “techno structure” of the corporations which now dominate the economy, have (…)

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  Across The Atlantic To Hell

  21 December 2008, by Bishnu Dey

  There was hope there was also apprehension,
  – Because the Demon was in no way healthy.
  – Nor was there the mind to be cured.
  Yes, we had seen sudden cataclysms happen in Nature
  – Of Sun and Rain and Thunder or of primeval beasts,
  – But when man gets ill with greed
  – Then the damage is worse than that of a natural beast.
  At the last stage of endless fortitude
  – Of crores of human lives, from the lowest depths
  – Of the animal world the beast’s unspeakable
  – Mastery in trickery and (…)

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  On Re-Hyphenating India and Pakistan

  21 December 2008, by Ninan Koshy

  At a time when New Delhi is nervously watching signals about the India policy of President-elect Barack Obama, a think-tank close to his transition team has proposed a rejection of Condoleezza Rice’s doctrine of de-hyphenating India and Pakistan, a doctrine that governed US-India relations under the Bush Administration and became the basis of the controversial India-US nuclear agreement.
  The new Report by the Center for American Progress (CAP),
  “Advocating a New Strategy for Prosperity (…)

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  Making Pakistan Pay the Price

  21 December 2008, by S G Vombatkere

  In the context of what has come to be known as Mumbai 11/26, in an article “Take the war to the enemy” by Captain Bharat Verma, Editor of Indian Defence Review, in IDR of December 8, 2008, he recommends that we must “take this war to Pakistan and make them pay the price”. It may be understood that he recommends that India take military action against Pakistan, though it is not at all clear what is meant by making “them” pay the price, nor what is the price to be paid to whom. Would the (…)

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  Mumbai Terror Attack : Some Reflections

  21 December 2008, by Nandita Haksar

  There is one image which refuses to fade: heavily armed terrorists moving around the dance floor of the seven-star hotel in darkness, with the full awareness that they would die very soon. What were the thoughts of these men who broke into the magnificent hotel and moved around the antique pieces, the chandeliers hanging from the gilded ceiling and the priceless pieces of furniture?
  None of the journalists gathered outside the hotel under siege were even thinking of the ten (or was it (…)

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  Dealing with Terrorism: Alternatives for India

  21 December 2008, by Muchkund Dubey

  India has been a victim of terrorism partly organised and mounted from our neighbouring country, Pakistan, and partly engendered and engineered by domestic forces, for longer than any other country in the world. The attack by ten terrorists coming from outside the country by the sea route, on principal landmarks in the city of Mumbai, the commercial hub of India, was unprecedented in its daring and intensity of violence. The people of Mumbai and the country as a whole are still trying to (…)

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  Behind the CIA-run Prison in Thailand

  21 December 2008, by Mansoor Ali

  The CIA is still running dozens or even hundreds of so-called secret prisons in different parts of the world. After the exposure of the CIA-run network of secret prisons in Europe, George W. Bush has evidently chosen to move them to Asia. One of these is in Udon, the capital of a province in Thailand, located 560 km northeast of Bangkok, the Thai capital. The Thai Air Force has a base in Udon known as “Kong Bin 203” and US military transport and private planes frequently land there with (…)

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  Abolition of Child Labour and Right to Education

  21 December 2008, by Lakshmidhar Mishra

  ‘Hope springs eternal in human breast’ is an old adage in English. It became quite meaningful when I came to know with a lot of happiness a few days back from the newspapers that the Union Cabinet has approved the Right to Education Bill, 2005 and that the said Bill was likely to be introduced in the forthcoming winter session of Parliament in December 2008.
  In 1946 India signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 26 of the Declaration said that everyone had the right to (…)

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  Failure of Loan Waiver to Help Most Farmers

  21 December 2008, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  This year a lot of publicity had been given to a Rs 60000 crore loan relief scheme for farmers which was later extended to a Rs 71,000 crore scheme. This scheme did not include loans taken from private moneylenders, it was confined to loans taken from banks and related financial institutions. Still this scheme had raised a lot of hope as many farmers had significant levels of bank debt. While the scheme provided full waiver for small farmers, it also promised 25 per cent loan (…)