Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Slaying of A.T. Babu

  2 August 2008, by Sudhir Vombatkere

  A.T. Babu was the leading light of the RMVAS [Rajya Madyapaana Virodhi Andolana Samithi or State Temperance (Anti-Liquor) Movement] in Bangalore, Karnataka, for nearly two decades. He was an ever-cheerful, dedicated and action-oriented voluntary social worker with Gandhian motives, opposing the establishment of bars and liquor vends near places of education and worship and in residential areas, and tirelessly agitating with both the government as well as the people for the correct (…)

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  Threat to State Security : Incarceration of a Public Health Practitioner

  2 August 2008, by K B Saxena

  Book Review
  Indian Doctor in Jail: The Story of Binayak Sen—A Report to the Nation by Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen; Publishers: Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen, Promila & CoPublishers in association with Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi and Chicago; pages 112; price : Rs 250.
  Democracies are considered the world over as a superior form of polity when compared to authoritarian regimes due to their ability and confidence to face multiple and complex challenges (…)

• Nation Bruised, Democracy in Peril

  30 July 2008, by SC

  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his overseas mentor, US President George W. Bush, can heave a big sigh of relief and they have already done so by exchanging warm compliments following the trust vote in the Lok Sabha on July 22. The PM and his government won it quite convincingly—of the 541 members 275 voted for the government, 256 against it and there were 10 abstentions; as many as 14 Opposition MPs [five BJP, one BD, one TDP, one JD(S), two MDMK, one TRS, one MPF, one NLP] voted for the (…)

• On CPM Leadership and Somnath Chatterjee

  30 July 2008, by Chandra Sen

  By taking summary action against Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, a 10-term party MP who was elected the presiding officer of the Lower House of Parliament in June 2004, the CPM has once again exposed its undemocratic functioning. On the face of it what party General Secretary Prakash Karat has said is unexceptionable. A Speaker cannot be from the Opposition, and the CPM and its three Left partners became part of the Opposition once they communicated to the President, on July 9, their (…)

• Judge the Nuclear Deal on Facts, not Convictions

  30 July 2008, by Ashok Parthasarathi

  A recent newspaper editorial says:
  It always takes political courage to stake one’s government on a matter of conviction.
  This is most surprising. All public policies must be based on facts—here facts about the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement. A phrase repeated ad nauseam by the deal’s protagonists has been: it is in the “national interest”. Is it? I am afraid not. Why? Because of the nature, scope, content, intent, and detailed provisions of Hyde and the 123.
  The Hyde Act (…)

• Who is Worried about the National Interest?

  30 July 2008, by Arun Kumar

  Unbelievable horse-trading is going on in the corridors of power in Delhi on an issue—the nuclear deal—which, according to both sides of the divide, is a matter of national interest. It must not be lost sight of that the agreement with the IAEA is only the first step to formalising the agreement with the USA and that is the real intent of what is going on today. The debate today is lost in the technicalities of the agreement with the IAEA or the contradictions between the Hyde Act and the (…)

• Nuclear Deal—Another Client State of USA

  30 July 2008, by Bikash Choudhury

  The British East India Company came to India for trade and commerce and lived to rule the country for a century. The irony of the nuclear deal is the same party, the Congress, which spearheaded our freedom movement, is falling to the imperialist trap and inviting the Bush-led US Administration to do business again in India by our economist-turned Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. The credibility and intention of Dr Singh may be unquestionable but apparently he is ill-advised.
  Dr (…)

• India’s Roughshod Ruling Class

  30 July 2008, by Badri Raina

  I may be accused of ever having written a good word about L.K. Advani, the leader and now projected prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu-Rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party.
  Now is the time to make amends.
  In an elaborate interview given to the redoubtable N.Ram of The Hindu (July 12, 2008)—easily the most literate of India’s premier English dailies—Advani has rightly pointed out that, in contrast to the current UPA regime, the NDA under Vajpayees’ premiership desisted from (…)

• Globalisation and India’s Economic Identity : An Overview

  30 July 2008, by V Mathew Kurian

  1. Introduction
  By imposing colonialism and imperialism, the British deprived of India’s ‘economic identity’. During the freedom struggle, great leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and many others thought about an ‘economic identity’ for India. However, the privilege of constituting and implementing it mainly went to Pandit Nehru. The ‘economic architecture’ of post-independent India was largely Nehruvian. Nevertheless, in the (new) globalisation1 era, the (…)

• Indo-US Nuclear Deal: India Backtracks on Disarmament

  30 July 2008, by N D Jayaprakash

  The text of the Indo-US nuclear deal, which is titled “Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of India and the Government of the United States of America Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy” (also known as the 123 Agreement) and which was released on August 3, 2007, is totally silent on the issue of nuclear disarmament. This is wholly contradictory to the explicit assurance made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his statement before Parliament in response to the (…)