Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Nirav Modi Heist and Chowkidar Narendra Modi

  18 March 2018

  by Ram Puniyani
  Corruption is a big menace in different countries, including ours. We witnessed the spectacle of the movement against corruption demanding Jan Lokpal, at the dharna at Jantar Mantar in 2011. The battle-cry of that surge was primarily against the Congress, and as a marginal balancing act occasionally the BJP was also named. Anna Hazare, who was projected to be the central leader, was presented as the second Gandhi. He was flanked by the current Chief Minister of Delhi, (…)

• Unfolding a South Asian Perspective on Constitutionalism

  18 March 2018

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Deepak Kumar
  Comparative Constitutionalism in South Asia edited by Khilnani S., Raghavan V. and Thiruvengadam A.K.; Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 2016; (2nd edition); pages: 401; Price: Rs 595.00.
  South Asia is a region which emerged out of a colonial past and which holds multitude of diversities, legal traditions, constitutional heterogeneities and political structures. It has had a diverse history of constitutionalism with varied meanings and interpretations. In (…)

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  Message from the North-East

  12 March 2018

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The BJP has embarked on a media blitzkrieg that it has swept the North-East in the recent Assembly elections and is closer to its goal of a Congress-mukt Bharat. Do the election results confirm its claim? In Tripura, it trounced the CPI-M and ended its quarter-century-old rule. But to a large extent the CPI-M will have to thank itself for its humiliating defeat. It had failed to realise the extent of its isolation from the people. It knew that RSS workers had fanned out (…)

• Tripura: Time for Left to Reorient

  12 March 2018, by Anil Rajimwale

  Lenin said, practice is the criterion of truth. Tripura has forcefully underlined the need for a drastic reorientation of the tactics, even strategy, of the Left and the Communists in particular. Tripura has again emphasised what was already clear. It has proved that the democratic forces must reject a narrow-minded and sectarian approach, reorient and adopt a broad attitude.
  The Tripura poll outcome shows what should be done and what not, as was in West Bengal earlier. The result there (…)

• Jyoti Basu’s Bombshell

  12 March 2018, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  We are reproducing the following piece by N.C. that appeared in this weekly in January 1997 on an interview to a national daily given by Jyoti Basu, the CPM patriuarch and former West Bengal CM, regarding the party Central Committee’s decision in May 1996 debarring him from becoming the Prime Minister of India heading the United Front Government at the Centre, as desired by the country’s entire political spectrum. The interview was published in the daily on January 1, (…)

• Lessons from the Tripura Election

  12 March 2018, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Ten years ago, in 2008, I was invited to speak at a colloquium in Rome regarding the war in Afghanistan; this was organised by the think-tank affiliated with the Party of European Socialists, the platform that brings together national level social-democratic political parties in the member-countries of the European Union. The hosts were Italy’s Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), the successor to the former Italian Communist Party.
  I carried back two precious memories from that trip to (…)

• No Conflict between Hindi and Regional State Languages

  12 March 2018, by Rajindar Sachar

  For some time past a misguided effort is being made to castigate India for asking the General Assembly of the UN to include Hindi as one of the languages at the UN. They seem to suggest that English should be recognised as the language of India because Hindi is not understood in the whole of India, but they conveniently forget that Hindi is the language of an overwhelming number of people. Of course, it is not in any way an attempt to reduce the respect given to the other Indian languages (…)

• When has the Bureaucracy treated People with Respect?

  12 March 2018, by Sandeep Pandey

  There is pressure from the government officials in Delhi that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should apologise for the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash inside the CM’s residence by Aam Admi Party Members of the Legislative Assembly. Two MLAs, Prakash Jarwal and Amanatullah Khan, have been arrested whereas there has been no action against the employees who beat up Minister Imran Husain and Delhi Dialogue Commission chairperson Ashish Khetan inside the Delhi Secretariat earlier. (…)

• Tribute: Neelabh Mishra, the Activist Journalist

  12 March 2018

  National Herald’s Editor-in-chief Neelabh Mishra, who had been admitted to Apollo Hospital in Chennai in February 2018, was critically ill with complications resulting from non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis. He breathed his last on February 24, surrounded by his relatives, friends and comrades. Tributes to Neelabh poured in from all quarters—from politicians of all stripes, from journalists across the country and from India’s grassroots movements fighting for equality and social change. Such was (…)

• Cultivating Loss Reaping Suicides: Perils of being a Farmer in the Republic of India

  12 March 2018

  by Annapurna and Navneet Sharma
  People eat mango kernel for hobby. —Agriculture Minister, Odisha
  (seeking) Loan waiver has become fashion these days. —Venkaiah Naidu, former Minister, Vice-President, India
  Farmers have been uncared for ever since India got freedom. Of late, they have been pushed to the walls, their pain has been ignored and they are exploited in name of development policies. The growth rate in rural agricultural employment during 1983 to 1993-94 was 1.38 per cent and (…)