Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Thinking beyond the Immediate

  24 February 2019, by S G Vombatkere

  The February 14 Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)-sponsored suicide car-bomb carnage on the CRPF convoy, with loss of over 40 lives and as many injured, is doubtless condemnable. But apart from the personal tragedies and confusion following the carnage, there are important matters to be addressed.
  TRP versus Hard Facts
  The electronic media broke the news with attempts to lay the blame on some slip-up at some level of some organisation. TV anchors interviewed “experts”—this writer was one (…)

• Kashmir: Nearing Zero Hour

  24 February 2019, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Kashmir today has become the touchstone of Indian statesmanship. The crisis that has emerged there can no longer be managed by conventional methods of settling political acrimony. It has gone much beyond, and now it has assumed the magnitude of a definite threat to the integrity of the country.
  The militants who want Kashmir to secede from the Indian Union are today in control of life and politics—at least in the Valley itself. It is time the public in this country (…)

• For How Long would Kashmiris Suffer?

  24 February 2019

  by Aijaz Ahmad Turrey
  On Thursday, February 14, 2019, a CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) convoy, moving from Jammu to Srinagar, was for the first time attacked by a suicide bomber with an explosive-laden vehicle near Avantipora, Pulwama, Kashmir. The attack resulted in the death of 40 CRPF personnel. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. The attack has been condemned by every individual and community living in the (…)

• Chest-thumping and War-mongering must give way to Trust, Peace and Friendship

  24 February 2019, by Sandeep Pandey

  I went to participate in a candle-light homage-paying event at Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s statue organised by about 200 Dalit students on the Hazratganj main crossing in Lucknow on February 16, 2019 evening, two days after the dastardly terrorist act in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, in which 40 Central Reserve Police Forces’ personnel were killed. While the condolence meeting by Dalit students was sombre with no slogans being raised, at the neighbouring Mahatma Gandhi statue, much smaller nationalist (…)

• Union Budget 2019: Unethical Political Stance

  24 February 2019

  by Anup K. Sinha
  Budgets in India have recently become a mega event where the ruling government makes many announcements which are sensu stricto not related to the Budget at all. However, this year’s Union Budget presented by Piyush Goyal was arguably the most political in content and most arrogant in style in recent times. It was expected to be a low key, vote-on-account Budget by a lame-duck government, where routine, essential expenditures would be passed in Parliament. Days before the (…)

• The Subversion of Systems is More Fatal than Scams

  24 February 2019, by Badri Raina

  There is a rather thoughtless middle-class view that a scam is not a scam until there is a money trail that leads to some personal account or pocket.
  Take two instances from recent American political history: in the infamous Watergate case, the crime committed was not related to pecuniary transaction from which the then President, Richard Nixon, benefited. The culpability pertained to a systemic subversion: Nixon had colluded in the bugging of the Democratic Convention.
  Nixon had to go. (…)

• Agrarian Crisis and its Resolution

  24 February 2019

  by S.P. Shukla, Jaya Mehta, Vineet Tiwari
  This article was written quite some time ago before the ‘Delhi Chalo’ movement of farmers in December 2018. In the introduction of the article the authors explained:
  “We wish to present this paper for the consideration of and interaction with peasants, activists, scholars and indeed the entire ‘Nation For Farmers’ which is being mobilised as part of the magnificent Delhi Chalo Movement of Farmers.
  “We have been engaged, for more than a decade (…)

• Bulandshahr: Unravelling the Anatomy of a Riot

  24 February 2019

  by Ram Puniyani
  The scene of violence in the name of emotive issues has been continuously throwing new patterns of instigating and orchestrating violence. In recent times we saw major violence following the demolition of the Babri mosque (1992), Godhra train burning (Gujarat carnage 2002), murder of a Swami (Kandhamal 2008), on the pretext of love-Jihad (Muzaffarnagar 2013) among others. The gross pattern seems to be to spread hatred against sections of society and unleash the hate, which (…)

• Two Phenomena of ‘Modi Era’: Virtual World and Unabated Communal-Caste Conflicts

  24 February 2019

  by Prem Singh
  First phenomenon: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s team has succeeded in projecting the political debate from the ground on to the virtual world. The political and intellectual class has played a pivotal role in the last three decades in the crystallisation of this successful endeavour of Modi. As political and intellectual discussions began taking shape in a manner which led to the decimation of any opposition to the New Economic Policies introduced in 1991, the virtual world (…)

• Land Acquisitions in India: A State of Exception

  24 February 2019, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The eminent political philosopher of our time, Giorgio Agamben, argued in an interview: “. . . the state of exception or state of emergency has become a paradigm of the government today...The state of exception establishes a hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law.” He further argued in this context: “...governance through administration, through management, is in the ascendancy, while rule by law appears to be in decline”. Agamben highlighted a paradox in the (…)