Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  Veteran Historian and Versatile Personality

  2 June 2008, by Ravindra Sharma

  On May 4, around 11 am, a close friend of mine telephoned me to inform that Professor Suhas Chakravarty is no more. I broke down. I rang up to Dr K.K. Panda to confirm the news. The news was correct. I passed the news to Dr V.C. Bhutani (a close associate of Prof Suhas). Three of us attended Prof Suhas’ condolence meeting at the India International Centre. His condolence meeting gave a message—that a sincere, honest, dedicated, competent and missionary man is still honoured by the Indian (…)

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  Food Crisis and the Patriotic Task of Kisan Organisations

  2 June 2008, by Chaturanan Mishra

  The present food crisis is worldwide and is not a one-year affair because of some natural disasters or drought only. It is because of years of bad government policy in agriculture, as the Newsweek of May 19 has noted. The present abnormal food price in India is also because of years of bad agricultural policy of the government. For the last several years the growth food production was falling and no one took notice of it. The develop-ment of irrigation was badly neglected. The quality of (…)

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  On Sethusamudram Project

  2 June 2008, by S G Vombatkere

  COMMUNICATION
  The Supreme Court has asked the government to make a statement on the historicity of the Ram Setu. If the government can show that the Ram Setu is historical, it becomes a national monument that must be preserved. If the government cannot show its historicity, the religious plea will hold good and the result is likely to be the same, namely, that the Sethusamudram Canal Project will have to be scrapped or the canal re-aligned overland.
  The politicisation of the project has (…)

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  ’Marxist’ Metamorphosis and the Positive Alternative

  2 June 2008, by Sharad Patil

  COMMUNICATION
  You are bravely exposing the criminalisation of the Left Front’s rule in West Bengal. The CPI’s Chaturanan Mishra’s call for discussion on socialism is being responded in earnest.
  The murder and rape squads formed by the CPM in West Bengal are but copies of similar squads in Kerala. I had similar experience in the CPM in the seventies before my district unit resigned from it in 1978. Nikhil-da had the courage and integrity to publish my ‘Struggle for a New Line’ in 1978. (…)

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  Causes and Consequences of Food Price Behaviour

  2 June 2008, by Kamala Prasad

  After a long time, the price of basic foodstuffs is centre-stage. The balance of attention still remains on the overall agricultural crisis. The roots of that crisis are structural and deeper. They span structural issues in land, water and human relations. The time seems appropriate to review food prices in an autonomous regime. The economy of all agricultural production, more so commercial and industrial, concerns segments of the population. Price and availability of food concern all the (…)

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  Era of Dual Rule in Russia

  2 June 2008, by M K Bhadrakumar

  On a frIGID EVENING IN February, Russia’s leviathan energy conglomerate, Gazprom, the world’s third largest company by market value, held a lavish 15th birthday bash in Moscow in one of the most hallowed halls within the Kremlin’s ramparts—the towering Palace theatre where the Communist Party of the Soviet Union used to hold its Party Congresses. The centrepiece of the gig on February 11 was a concert by Deep Purple.
  Gazprom hired the rock icons for its coming- out party for a single (…)

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  Budget and the Rural Sector

  2 June 2008, by Kripa Shankar

  The national Sample Survey data in “Income, Expenditure and Productive Assets of Farmer Households” 2003 have shown that the average annual income of a farmer household from cultivation is less than Rs 12,000 and that from all sources is less than Rs 25,000. It found that 96 per cent of the households are in deficit and half of the households are indebted. Debt waiver can only be welcomed in such a situation. Marginal and small farmers, once indebted, will hardly be in a position to repay (…)

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  Meaning of Bombay Bomb Blasts

  2 June 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  With March 12 there has arrived a new dimension in Indian politics—qualitatively diffe-rent from what we have so far witnessed since independence.
  Sometimes mainstream parliamentary politics was interrupted by outbursts of violence in some areas, and at some phase, there has been armed militancy as could be seen in the Communist campaign in Telengana in the first years after independence and the Naxalite struggle in the Andhra villages or the Naga and the ULFA movements in the North-East. (…)

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  Left’s Misfired Missive

  2 June 2008, by Sankar Ray

  The West Bengal supremo and Polit-Bureau member of the CPI-M, Biman Bose, slapped a suspicion at the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha leadership that the movement is inspired by US imperialism. In a more gossipy than substantive tone, he said: “We do not have evidence to prove the allegation but we have strong doubts that US Intelligence agencies are linked with the political turmoil in the Darjeeling hills.” Carrying on his political formulation in a cavalier fashion, he added that there might be a (…)

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  They Insist Your Show Must Be Cancelled!

  2 June 2008, by Tapas Sinha

  The phone call came on April 10. One of the organisers of the Champadanga Theatre Festival was on the line. On the receiving end was thespian Kaushik Sen, who has been active in the civil society movement of Nandigram.
  “We will not be able to host your play. There’s pressure from the party. Look, I am also an activist of the party. But there are others here and some of them are very rough. And they insist that we should not allow you to perform here.”
  This invited performance of (…)