Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Intrigue takes Afghanistan to the Brink

  29 March 2008, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The people in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan would vouchsafe that General Rashid Dostum’s behaviour can be depended on as an unfailing barometer of their country’s political climate. The tough Uzbek leader from Shibirghan keenly reacts when tensions begin to mount in his country. The brief three-year spell between 1998 and 2001 was an exception when the Taliban regime forced him into exile in Ankara, Turkey. But no sooner had the September 11, 2001 attacks taken place, Dostum (…)

• Awards like Cookies

  29 March 2008, by Sankar Ray

  Like Bollyood movies, political productions out of New Delhi can at times be climax-drenched, albeit unpredictably. One such tediously repetitive episode was around the choice of the 2008 Padma awards, India’s highest state honours. The new and ludicrous aspect was the out-of-etiquette campaign from political quarters. But it must be said that the Left—the Communist Parties in particular—kept consciously insulated from this tamasha.
  There is no point in blaming President Pratibha Patil (…)

• Right to Information Act : An Instrument for Stronger and Vibrant Democratic Process in India

  29 March 2008, by Bharti Chhibber

  The Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 promises to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority. This Act is supposed to enable people to responsibly scrutinise government officials and legal processes. The Act emanates from what the Indian Constitution guarantees itself. Under Article 19 (1) (a) the Constitution guarantees every citizen freedom of speech and expression with certain restrictions. Logically to allow the exercise of freedom of speech and (…)

• Time to Smash the Mafia

  29 March 2008, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The BJP leader, L.K. Advani, is right in stating, as he did in Madras on March 21, that the bomb blasts in Bombay and Calcutta had nothing to do with the Ayodhya issue. At the same time it would be naïve to claim that the communal upheaval that came in the wake of the Ayodhya happenings on December 6, did not provide the ideal setting for the blasts in Bombay on March 12. The general environment of violence in the country certainly got a fillip from the uninhibited demonstration of violence (…)

• A Roving Review of a Police Masterpiece

  29 March 2008, by V R Krishna Iyer

  BOOK REVIEW
  Political Violence and the Police in India by K.S. Subramanian; Sage Publication India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; pages 257; price: 350.
  No civilised society can survive in peace, no citizen can live in haven with happy human rights without an exceedingly pragmatic and well-grounded and executive instrumentality, especially disciplined police personnel with absolute integrity, intelligence, and learning in law, technology and training capable enough to beat the cleverest criminal, (…)

• Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Federalise Foreign Policy

  29 March 2008, by S K Jain

  The Indo-US nuclear deal has generated enough heat to cloud the stability of the Congress-led UPA Government. Without going into the argument over whether the nuclear deal is in or against our national interest, it has raised an important issue of federalisation of the foreign policy and treaty making power of the Central Government.
  The Constitution of India gives the Central Government in New Delhi virtually exclusive jurisdiction over issues of foreign and defence policy. In practice (…)

• Neglected Function of Indian Universities

  29 March 2008, by Ashok Celly

  Universities are supposed to perform three major functions: teaching, research and extension. While the debate in our country, both in the academia and the media, has centred round the first two functions, the third is hardly talked about. Which is a great pity, for extension—carrying the benefits of research and learning to the people—is an equally vital function that a university must perform particularly in the context of a country like India. The social role of a university in the Indian (…)

• Implementing Janadesh—The Task Ahead

  29 March 2008, by Bharat Dogra

  The Janadesh foot-march of 25,000 ‘oppressed of the earth’ from Gwalior to Delhi received a lot of well-deserved attention and praise. I talked to many of these members when they reached Delhi, when they were sitting on dharna and when they were about to take the train back home. All of them had been away from home for over a month, most of them had been walking constantly for 27 days in difficult conditions. Yet not even one of them complained about the numerous difficulties they had faced. (…)

• Arab Christians: A Fight against Annihilation

  29 March 2008, by Ginu Zacharia Oommen

  West Asia is the birthplace of Christianity and home to some of the world’s most ancient Christian denominations, namely, Maronite Church, Greek Orthodox, Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Church, Assyrian Church, Syrian Catholic and so on. For some reasons the Arab Christians have been one of the main victims of the volatile and unstable political situation in West Asia. The colonial ‘God trick’ of nation-state creation and the carving out of modern Arab states (Khashan, 2001) (…)

• Agro-Economic Ramblings

  29 March 2008, by Sudhir Vombatkere

  Small farmers survive on acre-sized plots and landless labourers work on rich farmers’ lots. They plough and they dig, work hard and save while scientists learned rant and rave that such methods are backward, and hi-tech can do with chemical fertilisers and pesticides too, what traditional farming cannot—and they’re right! ’Cause methods traditional don’t kill the earth or fight the forces of Nature. Rather, they re-generate soil health, and farmyard manure helps re-instate soil (…)