Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Army Officers soliciting Judicial Protection during Operations in Good Faith

  9 September 2018

  by Gautam Sen
  In an unprecedented move, over 300 Indian Army officers have approached the Supreme Court of India on August 14 this year with a writ petition, posing a question on whether a soldier‘s discretion under operational conditions can be put under legal scrutiny. The move is in the backdrop of the investigation instituted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), at the behest of the highest judiciary, against some Army and State Police functionaries in certain cases emanating (…)

• Who Am I ?

  9 September 2018

  I’ve lived here for a long time, breathing its air, walking on its soil, building up my life, becoming a part of the neighbourhood— a sense of being inseparable embedded in my consciousness.
  Now I’m told I don’t belong here; my name does not figure in a list prepared to find the ‘indigenous’. Where will I go, if I fail to prove my long forgotten ‘credentials’? Is it to head towards deportation?
  Uncertain future looms large: stamped being an immigrant, huddled in a concentration camp with (…)

• Editors Guild condemns Myanmar Court’s Verdict against Two Reuters Journalists

  9 September 2018

  The Editors Guild of India condemns a Myanmar court’s verdict that has sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison after pronouncing them guilty of having breached the country’s Official Secrets Act.
  The Guild is opposed to the use of provisions under the Official Secrets Act in any country to throttle the voice of the media. The two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were investigating the death of 10 Rohingya Muslims.
  The Guild believes that the arrest and (…)

• CPI Demands Modi Government’s Reply to RBI Disclosure

  9 September 2018

  The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement on August 29, 2018.
  The official information of the Reserve Bank of India that 99.3 per cent currency in circulation at the time of note ban has come back to the Bank, exposes the tall claim of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister that black money got into trouble and the money to extremists has stopped due to demonetisation.
  The Reserve Bank should explain how much is deposited by the NRIs in the (…)

• 

  Looming Shadow of Fascism

  2 September 2018

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The time has come to call a spade a spade. The Modi Government can no longer be called just an ‘anti-democratic’ or ‘authoritarian’ government. It is fast becoming a fascist government. Suppression of all dissenting voices, arm-twisting of the media to fall in line with the official propaganda and make them join the round-the-clock singing of the praise of the Messiah who has come to take the 120 million people of this country to the portals of the Promised Land, (…)

• Tribute to Kuldip Nayar

  2 September 2018

  On August 23, Kuldip Nayar, the tallest surviving pillar of our Fourth Estate, breathed his last in the Capital. Just sixteen days earlier he and his wife met me at a function at New Delhi’s India Internation Centre. As usual he warmly told me: “I thought of contacting you. I was thinking of Nikhil.” Then he reminisced of their joint struggle against the Emergency, their staunch support to the MKSS’ Right to Information movement and their visit to the India-Pakistan border at Wagah at the (…)

• Kuldip Nayar Will also be Remembered for his Contribution to Social Movements

  2 September 2018

  COMMUNICATION
  Kuldip Nayar, the eminent journalist who breathed his last on August 23, will of course be remembered first and foremost for the remarkable continuity and extraordinary reach of his writings stretching over several decades but in addition he will be remembered also for his contribution to several social movements and causes. In fact several important events organised by important social movements were not considered complete without his blessings in recent years, and Kuldipji (…)

• The Doyen is Dead, Long Live the Reporter

  2 September 2018, by John Dayal

  Of course we will miss Kuldip Nayar. He was already a journalist perhaps a few months into the profession when I was born, and an editor when I became a reporter.
  In the fifty or so years I knew him and received the warmth of his friendship, I never worked with him in the profession. Indeed, I never worked in the newspapers and agencies he went to head as editor.
  But I did not have to, to recognise the subtle way he would mentor the reporters, or correspondents if you so wish to describe (…)

• Vajpayeeji: A Liberal in a Hardline Party

  2 September 2018

  by Vijay Kumar
  The predictable, and yet extremely sad, news of the death of Vajpayeeji is an irretrievable loss for the country.
  Atalji was a born leader, gifted statesman, quintessential liberal and classic democrat. No wonder, the epithet “right man in the wrong party” was gaining currency throughout the 1990s, when the period marked the resurgence of the BJP in the national political arena. He was dubbed the “right man” because he was temperamentally a liberal in a party, known for (…)

• Vajpayee’s Death: An Era Comes to an End

  2 September 2018

  One is saddened to learn of the demise of Atal Behari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister of India. The All India Forward Bloc expresses heartfelt condolences and pays rich tributes to the dignified memory of Vajpayee. He was an outstanding parliamentarian and statesman. His extraordinary oratorical skill was applauded by all irrespective of one’s party affiliation. The Agra Summit of 2001 between Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf was a new beginning in the relations (…)