Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Opening the Floodgates of Corruption

  7 April 2008, by Bharat Jhunjhunwala

  The Sixth Central Pay Commission has recommended implementation of a Performance Related Incentive Scheme to reward good employees and improve the quality of government work. Government departments will be allowed to retain one-half of the savings made by them as bonus to their employees. Say, the Public Works Department is spending Rs 1 crore a year for the maintenance of a particular road. It manages to do the same work in Rs 50 lakhs. One-half of the savings of Rs 50 lakhs will be (…)

• Barking Up the Wrong Tree

  7 April 2008, by Krishna Majumdar

  COMMUNICATION
  This is with reference to the article “Strengthening Molestation Law for Women’s Safety in India” by Minakshi Sethy and Prabira Sethy in Mainstream (March 8, 2008).
  The menace of sexual harassment faced by women everyday is undeniably taking on dangerous proportions. It needs to be looked at very seriously because without a clear understanding of why this phenomenon is spreading so widely across the country, we cannot really hope to combat it, much less get it under (…)

• India’s Relations with Myanmar, Bangladesh

  7 April 2008, by Amitava Mukherjee

  Although democracy has been restored in Pakistan, it is yet to be seen whether India has taken any lesson out of it. New Delhi’s handling of military dictatorships in the subcontinent during the last thirty years does not really arouse much hope and it will not be an overstatement to say that India’s meek and unimaginative response to the Army dictatorship of Myanmar has served neither our own interests nor has it been able to do justice to the bigger cause of democracy.
  To what extent (…)

• A Paradise Derailed

  7 April 2008, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  Sri Lanka: A Land in Search of Itself by Mohan K. Tikku; National Book Trust, India; pages 158; Rs 50.
  This is a gem of a book. Only a journalist with perspective and empathy could have condensed so well the tumultuous history of Sri Lanka in so few pages. Tikku, who spent many years in Colombo coinciding with the times Indian troops battled the LTTE in Sri Lanka, has missed nothing. And he has not minced words either. Tikku is clear what he feels has gone wrong with an (…)

• Political Implications of India-US Cooperation on Missile Defence

  7 April 2008, by Neha Kumar

  The visit of Robert Gates, Secretary of Defence of the United States, to India on February 27, 2008 was another step forward by both the countries to strengthen their strategic relationship. The main aim of the visit was to discuss arms procurement and India’s plans to buy 126 multi-role combat fighter jets which will cost approximately $ 10.6 billion. The other main issue discussed was to have a joint missile defence system although discussions on this issue are at an early stage. Robert (…)

• In the Midst of Gloom

  29 March 2008, by SC

  As Beijing continues to systematically crush the Tibetan people’s latest uprising coinciding with the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan upsurge and the Chinese leadership persists in spouting venom at the Tibetan people’s spiritual head, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, using the term “Dalai clique” to denounce him, the Tibetan Government-in-exile has disclosed that an estimated 140 persons were killed in the unrest in Tibet as well as the neighbouring provinces of Gansu and Sichuan. (…)

• Beijing’s Suppression Of Tibetan Unrest

  29 March 2008, by S Nihal Singh

  Beyond the spin the Chinese Government has put on the Tibetan unrest and the world’s reaction to it is a central problem: has Beijing the suppleness and wisdom to alter its monolithic view of how China should be governed? Deng Xiaoping had the stature and vision to improvise the Hong Kong experiment of “one country, two systems”. His successors in the shape of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao have failed to measure up to their responsibilities thus far.
  For one thing, the Chinese authorities are (…)

• Georgia: Saakashvili Manipulates his Return to Presidency

  29 March 2008, by Mansoor Ali

  While the US position in the former Soviet republics, which once constituted the formidable USSR before the 1991 disintegration, has considerably weakened over the years, Georgia has, in its latest presidential election in January this year, witnessed the return to power of President Saakashvili, perhaps the most brazenly loyal friend of Washington in the region whose antipathy to Moscow does not bear repetition.
  This unrepentant pro-American head of state, whose Georgian citizenship (…)

• Ambiguities, Incongruities, Inadequacies in Scheduled Tribes and Other Technical Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006

  29 March 2008, by B K Roy Burman

  The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Froest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 received assent of the President on December 29, 2006 but came into force only on December 31, 2007. In the meantime the draft Rules of the Act were published on July 19, 2007; but it was only after strident agitation by political parties and activists calumniating in massive mobilisation of tribal peoples from different parts of the country that a much diluted set of rules was finalised and (…)

• Is Kosovo the End of Europe?

  29 March 2008, by Ash Narain Roy

  Rene Magritte, the celebrated Belgian surrealist painter, once painted an apple and wrote on it, “This is not an apple.” He did the same on a pipe. Today, he could as well paint his country, Belgium, and certainly Kosovo, the youngest nation in the world, and write, “This is not a country.” Belgium is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, with its majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and few German-speaking citizens unable to decide what and for whom the state (…)