Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• No More Death Sentence, Please

  24 April 2007

  From Mohammed Afzal to Santosh Kumar Singh—death sentence is becoming yet another routine event in our society. This is not surprising. From patriarchal domination to terrorist nightmare—we find ourselves amidst a culture in which rape, murder and mass killing have become all-pervasive. No wonder, all those who have suffered—those who have experienced the trauma, and lost their dear ones—strive for justice. Capital punishment, therefore, appears like a bold assertion: society would by no (…)

• Urbanising Farmers: Bleeding the poor, fattening the rich

  24 April 2007

  Technology-driven industrialisation has necessarily caused a shift in human values, certainly among those sections of society that have benefited from industrialisation in India . Such people speak and think about liberty and freedom without stopping to think whether there are others who cannot even dream of those desirable conditions of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The freedom they seek is to “consume” without the responsibility of leaving something for others, or (…)

• Three Articles on Singur

  24 April 2007

  I pledged to visit Singur on 27.10.2006. I am 81, going to be 82 on 14.01.2007. I thought I would not be able to make it. I had a premonition that I would fall seriously ill. But nothing happened. On my way back I was feeling younger. I am still feeling so. I keep well when I have the opportunity to move around with the people who work for their living in fields and pastures. It is a fact. I hope I would have the opportunity to move among them again and again.
  Medha (Patkar) came. It (…)

• A Year after the Mau Riots

  24 April 2007

  The following pieces recently appeared in The Tribune. They are being combined and reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. —Editor
  Justice eludes Gang-rape Victims
  Exactly a year has elapsed since the gruesome incident on October 15, 2005, when a daughter-mother duo was gang-raped amidst the frenzy of the Mau communal riots. Handing over the case to the CBI, the (…)

• The Creamy Layer

  24 April 2007

  The concept of creamy layer was introduced by the Supreme Court in its judgment delivered in 1992, when it declared the amendment introduced by Parliament in the executive order issued by the National Front Government in 1990, as invalid. The amendment was made to help the poorer sections among the forward castes and some reservation was made for them. It also wanted to prioritise reservations among the other backward castes (OBCs) on an economic basis. The Court held that the Constitution (…)

• Our Concept of Globalisation

  24 April 2007

  Kocheril Raman Narayanan, the tenth President of India, passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness on November 9, 2005. While remembering him on his first death anniversary and as a token of our tribute to one of the most distinguished heads of state India has had, we are reproducing the speech he delivered at the banquet in honour of visiting US President Bill Clinton at Rashtrapati Bhavan on March 21, 2000. —Editor - -
  It is with great (…)

• Indian Muslims : What Is To Be Done?

  24 April 2007

  My chief concern here is to understand the situation of Muslims in India. But, to the extent that the issue is inevitably affected by the condition of Muslims worldwide, it is relevant to take note of factors that impinge upon that condition even at the risk of enumerating a critique that is by now often made and well-recognised. The truth needs as much repeating as the lie, especially when the lie has the backing of international money and muscle.
  First a word about the villainous (…)

• Globalisation of Terrorism

  24 April 2007

  The end of the Vietnam War marked the beginning of global terrorism. Senator Fulbright called the war as ‘the arrogance of power’. After the first Indo-China War, Vietnam was partitioned. Elections were to be held in 1956 for the unification of Vietnam. North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh was sure to win the elections. South Vietnam under Ngo Din Diem refused to take part in the elections and the war started.
  The North Vietnamese forces fought a guerrilla war with Russian military hardware (…)

• Clinton’s Bombs for Votes

  24 April 2007

  When the emperor has to go for elections, the subjects have to face the music. Nero was not the only one who fiddled when he let his capital being burnt down. The emperor of today cannot afford to let his capital being burnt down, because it is the only prize he covets—the acquisition of capital, that is, wealth. But to win the election, he is prepared to bomb out innocent unarmed men and women in far-away countries.
  As part of his Presidential election campaign, Clinton hit upon three (…)

• Meaning of the Two Verdicts

  24 April 2007, by SC

  Less than a week before the former ruler of Iraq Saddam Hussein, ousted more than three-and-a-half years ago by US troops following an illegal invasion bereft of any legitimacy or popular sanction, was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi court after a trial that, as the distingushed human rights activist and former US Attorney General Ramsay Clark categorically stated (before he was ejected from the court), was a travesty, Saddam’s chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, said in Baghdad (…)