Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Through the Prism of a True Communist

  23 December 2018, by Gargi Chakravartty

  BOOK REVIEW
  Fragments of Time: Memoirs of a Romantic Revolutionary by Subrata Banerjee; published by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh; 2017; pages i-xx and 494; Price: Rs 875, US $ 35.
  In popular image of Indian Communists, the names of Jyoti Basu, Hiren Mukherjee, Bhupesh Gupta or E.M.S. Namboodiripad generally surface. Subrata Banerjee did not belong to that category; yet he was a unique and distinct Communist. He has done a yeoman’s (…)

• Mizoram Assembly Elections 2018: An Analysis

  23 December 2018

  by V. Bijukumar
  The astounding victory of the Mizo National Front (MNF) and humbling defeat of the Congress in the recent Mizoram Assembly elections have signified the return of ethno-regional politics not only in the State but also in the North-East region as a whole. For the MNF it was really a daunting task to unseat the LalThanhawla-led Congress Government (in power for two consecutive terms) and for the Congress it was a fight to keep intact its last bastion in the North-East. Since (…)

• Russian deployment to Venezuela served the purpose

  23 December 2018, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The brief deployment of two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 ‘Blackjack’ strategic bombers to Venezuela last week became a sensational event. Indeed, it is a display of the growing Russian military prowess that has been restored under President Vladimir Putin’s watch. Blackjack has appeared on the Syrian skies more than once and lately flew past Alaska. Now it crosses the Pacific.
  The two nuclear-capable bombers landed in Venezuela on December 10. The Tu-160 Blackjack is a supersonic, (…)

• Assam Tangle: NRC, Immigrants and “D” Citizens brewing Crisis to Warrant Attention

  23 December 2018

  by A.K. Biswas
  In a massive exercise by the Registrar General of India (RGI), monitored by the Supreme Court of India, 28,983,677 out of 32,991,384 applicants were found eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens (NRC). He declared 40,07,707 to be ineligible. According to him, the draft was published under “supervision, monitoring and directions of the Supreme Court. It is a legal process and has been conducted in a transparent, fair, objective and meticulous manner.”1 (…)

• The RBI: Clash of Two Paradigms of Governance

  23 December 2018, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The abrupt resignation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Urjit Patel, and the appointment of Shaktikanta Das, who served as Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, upto May 2017, has brought into the public sphere the clash of two paradigms of governance. Patel’s resignation “came after over a month-long tussle over policy with the government that raised concerns about the central bank’s independence”. Reportedly, the areas of disagreement between the (…)

• The India - China - Tibet Triangle

  23 December 2018

  by Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
  Historical and Strategic Background
  About the significance of Tibet in India-China Territorial Disputes, perhaps I can start by reminding ourselves of a few familiar facts—
  1. In contemporary times, and I stress this because it was not always so, Tibet, China and India constitute a strategic triangle—a triangularity dictated by recent history and a geography that has endowed Tibet with immense natural wealth including water and mineral resources.
  2. For (…)

• Naxals and Other Pestilences

  23 December 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  What exactly is a Maoist? Or a Naxalite? Or an Activist? Or an Anti-national? Or an Urban Naxal? (Is there a Village Naxal?) Obviously there is something bad about them, though we don’t know what. In the old days of binary values, if you were a communist you were bad; if you were anti-communist you were good. Now communism and Marx don’t matter. Note that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was banned in 2004 while the Communist Party of India-Marxist was considered so (…)

• A Programme for Justice, Peace, Development and Environment Protection

  23 December 2018, by Bharat Dogra

  Any comprehensive understanding of India’s possible pathways in the near future should be linked to a wider understanding of the most essential features of the present-day world. India should of course plan its future in accordance with its needs, but this has to be seen in the wider context of the world’s most serious issues and problems so that the path India chooses is in conformity with the world’s most urgently felt needs.
  The two most important features of the present-day world are: (…)

• On the Rafale Question:‘Circumspection’ in the Court

  23 December 2018, by Anil Nauriya

  From a reading of the recent judgement passed on December 14, 2018 by the Supreme Court on the Rafale matter involving Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (“MMRCA”), it is clear that the Court has held its hand largely on account of its having been a Defence-related transaction. This led the Court to circumscribe the scope of judicial review in the petitions before it and to state at the end of the judgement that the matter had been looked at only from the perspective of the Writ Jurisdiction (…)

• Most Backward Notions of the Most Educated People!

  23 December 2018

  by Sukumaran C.V.
  Article 15 (1), which is included as Funda-mental Rights in our Constitution, says: “The state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.” The Sabarimala temple in the so-called God’s Own Country has virtually been violating the Constitution by practising discrimination against women in the name of gender. The Supreme Court rightly put an end to this gender discrimination on September 28, 2018. (…)