Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Towards a Democratic Union of South Asia An Idea Whose Time Has Come

  23 May 2016, by Bharat Dogra

  One out of five persons in the world lives in South Asia. This is also a region where a very large number of farm animals live and where there is a rich diversity of other life forms and their diverse habitats. However, with very serious accentuation of the ecological crisis and science-based prediction of the likelihood of worse to come, human life as well as most other forms of life in the region face unprecedented threats due to man-made factors. While these threats are many-sided, (…)

• Modi’s Nepal Conundrum

  23 May 2016, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The India-Nepal relationship is staring at the abyss. It has been on a roller-coaster through the past two-year period of the BJP Government, and of late, hurtling down the hill uncontrollably. A tipping-point is nearing and the famous lines from the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, come to mind: ‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for, when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes unto you.’
  Who are the monsters our country is (…)

• Spectre of Influx

  23 May 2016

  by Samit Kar
  India is now witnessing Assembly elections in five States covering the vast expanse of the country. Of the five States where new governments are to be formed subsequent to the poll, West Bengal is now under a very long election process having seven parts. This shows how the State is now reeling under a depressing law and order condition. Never in the history of electioneering in a State of our country had this experience of the conduct of election segregated in so many parts (…)

• Would Aung San Suu Kyi succeed in freeing Burma from Army’s Dominance?

  23 May 2016

  by Monaem Sarker
  Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Laureate, spent more than 15 years in detention, most of it under house arrest. She was released from her current third period of detention on Saturday, November 13, 2010. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945 in Rangoon, Myanmar, a country traditionally known as Burma. Her father, formerly the de facto Prime Minister of British Burma, was assassinated in 1947.
  Suu kyi’s father Aung San, born on February (…)

• BJP loses Face, PM lands in a Soup

  17 May 2016, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The second phase of Parliament’s Budget session has concluded. According to statistics, this phase was the most productive of all the sittings since the Narendra Modi Government came to power at the Centre two years ago.
  The most significant development of the last few days was the Harish Rawat-led Congress Government winning the floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly under the supervision of the Supreme Court. It secured the trust vote 33-28 backed as the Congress was by the (…)

• Growing Intolerance in a Tolerant Society

  17 May 2016

  by Ram Puniyani
  Towards the end of 2015 many writers and eminent citizens returned their national honours protesting against the growing atmosphere of intolerance. The list was long and this acted as a process where some introspection took place in society. Still the ruling dispensation and its associates in the Hindu Right-wing politics, the RSS combine, began criticising those who returned their awards, accusing them of being politically motivated. They were also criticised for doing so (…)

• Myanmar: One Gentle Step at a Time

  17 May 2016, by Sandeep Shastri

  The newly elected NLD Government has now been in power in Myanmar for just over a month. Its historic win in the November 2015 elections was a categorical vote in favour of democratisation and transition away from military rule. Under the leadership of its charismatic leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD was seen as a symbol of change and a harbinger of democratic transformation. There were immense hurdles along the way. The military continued to hold one-fourth of the seats in the (…)

• Letter from Kishenji to his Mother

  17 May 2016

  The following is a letter written by Kishenji, a former Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist), who was killed in a so-called eancounter in West Bengal in November 2011. (His full name was Mallojula Koteswara Rao.) The letter was written before his death. It has been translated from the original Telugu by Anishetty Shankar and sent to us from Nizamabad, Telangana for publication in this journal on the occasion of
  Mother’s Day on May 8, 2016.
  Mother!
  Are you well ?
  Feople are (…)

• Krishna Menon: Not Millstone but Milestone

  16 May 2016, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  May 3 marked the 120th birth anniversary of Vengali Krishnan Krishna Menon, the former Defence Minister of India (popularly known as V.K. Krishna Menon). Unfortunately the anniversary went largely unnoticed. He was born near Calicut on May 3, 1896 and passed away in New Delhi on October 6, 1974. On this occasion we are reproducing the following piece from N.C.’s “New Delhi Skyline” written in Mainstream (December 3, 1966). This was written in the context of the ongoing (…)

• Remembering Krishna Menon

  16 May 2016, by Barun Das Gupta

  Vengali Krishnan Krishna Menon (1896-1974) whose 120th birthday on May 3 this year quietly passed by, unobserved and unremem-bered, is now an almost forgotten hero—or villain, according to one’s perception. Krishna Menon stood like a rock by the side of Jawaharlal Nehru when the Right in India was consoli-dating and challenging Nehru’s leadership, and especially his foreign policy, which had three component parts — fostering friendship with the Soviet Union and China, keeping consciously (…)