Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Bihar: Communal Violence Smears the Progressive Image of Nitish

  14 April 2018

  by Arun Srivastava
  The politics of communal chasm and hatred has been the gift of the Hindu hardliners. Whether it has been the partition of India or marginalisation of the Muslims in independent India, these hardliners have simply worked to vitiate the communal harmony. No doubt the Muslim fundamentalists have only acted to further worsen the situation.
  I often wonder: can’t these elements allow the people to live in peace? While the marginalisation of Muslims began soon after (…)

• Ram Bhakti, Like News, Goes Fake

  14 April 2018, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  We haven’t had a more turbulent Ram Navami in recent memory. In the name of the Lord who exiled his own wife for what he considered dharma, several adharmic activities were carried out by his alleged followers. The government in Delhi contributed its share of adharma with arbitrary moves purportedly to stop fake news. But revelations that its own party was second to none in the fake news industry forced it to make a retreat, a suspiciously fake retreat.
  Ram Navami is meant to (…)

• CBSE Paper Leak and its Prevention: The Role of Education Reform

  14 April 2018

  by Kunal Ghosh
  On March 28, 2018 the Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declared that question papers of Class-10 Mathematics and Class-12 Economics had been leaked a few days before the board exams, and therefore these two examinations would be re-held on a date to be announced later. This has raised a howl from the student community as entirely expected, and the media is abuzz with all kinds of comments and political thrusts and counter-thrusts. The Minister of (…)

• Exploring the Ideas of J.C. Kumarappa: The

  14 April 2018

  by K. Gireesan, D. Jeevan Kumar, M. Lingaraju and Jos Chathukulam
  This is a brief report on a national seminar held at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru on December 29-30, 2017 to explore the ideas of J.C. Kumarappa on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary. The seminar sought to take stock of the implications of his ideas for contemporary India, especially in relation to decentralisation and sustainable development.
  The seminar was organised jointly by (…)

• Aadhaar and Welfare: A Sceptical Note

  14 April 2018, by Arup Kumar Sen

  In the Supreme Court hearing on Aadhaar, before a two-judge Bench, in May 2017, the then Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, while countering the petitioners’ objections to the government’s move, said that their “arguments on so-called privacy and bodily intrusions are bogus”. He also offered pro-welfare, anti-corruption and anti-terrorist arguments in favour of Aadhaar: “It is an effective tool to check terror financing and black money. It ensures that money meant for poor people reaches (…)

• Jam Saqi — A Communist of Rare Strain

  14 April 2018

  TRIBUTE
  by Sankar Ray
  The death of Jam Saqi, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Pakistan, on March 5, 2018 in Hyderabad, Sindh province, revived pensive as well as nostalgic memories especially among his comrades and admirers in Pakistan and the fast-depleting generation of veterans who worked with him or were abreast of the intrepid resistance against military-bureaucratic-feudal ruling class of Pakistan. For the younger generation of Pakistanis who have a (…)

• The Davos Disaster: The Heyday of the Halwaii

  14 April 2018, by Ashok Parthasarathi

  The annual event of the World Economic Forum now underway in Switzerland is with us again. Indeed, it is the scent of the air. This annual jamboree of the world’s top politicians, businessmen and international organisations like the IMF, World Bank and WTO is our planet’s capitalist show-case. Everybody who is anybody on the world stage is at Davos. The pronouncements at Davos are eagerly looked forward to by a non-existent entity called the “international community”. The political leaders (…)

• On the Condition of Nehru Memorial at Teen Murti Bhavan

  14 April 2018

  COMMUNICATION
  We are concerned about the condition of the memorial of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru which is located in New Delhi’s Teen Murti Bhavan. We feel sad to note that the Teen Murti Bhavan is in a condition which raises several questions about transparency and accountability of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
  For some months now, the Teen Murti Bhavan has been hosting an exhibition on two Prime Ministers, Atal Behari Vajpayee and P.V. Narasimha Rao. There is no (…)

• The Cruelty of Metaphors

  14 April 2018, by Badri Raina

  Metaphors are cruel things, never easy to deploy. It will have to be said that the genius of deploying metaphors after all distinguishes a Shakespeare from an Amit Shah.
  When Macbeth intones the sad, self-reflexive words, “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent/Only vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself and falls on the other”, he knows exactly what he means: as he vaults on to the horse of intent, his overreaching ambition overshoots the back of the horse and he falls in failure (…)

• Hindutva and Cow Terror: Politics of Hatred

  14 April 2018

  by Jayanta Kumar Dab
  It was in the late 19th century that the cow emerged as an important rallying point for mass political mobilisation in India. Hindu nationalists sought to unite Hindus against the British colonial rule and subsequently, against Muslims amidst the growing Hindu-Muslim communalism in the early 20th century. The cow has since become a potent symbol of Hindutva, a Hindu supremacist ideology espoused by the Sangh Parivar. And now the cow has become a symbol of annihilation (…)