Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Right to Food Programme —
 Some Questions

  1 October 2013

  The National Food Security Programme involves $ 21 billion per year to subsidise grain for about 810 million people. The main cause of malnutrition includes high prices, poor sanitation. Many people add that 43 per cent of children go hungry as well as many mothers.
  These ideas and remedies demonstrate once more the gap between urban elites—often decision-makers—and villagers, economic and social issues. Already in 1975 the great anthropologist, M.N. Srinivas, was deploring this current. (…)

• The Metamorphosis of Muzaffarnagar

  1 October 2013, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The recent riots in Muzaffarnagar bear testimony to the fact that riots are no longer an urban phenomenon. In the past, riots happened in the cities. But, now they have spread their wings in the countryside as well.1 Moreover, the Muzafffarnagar clashes prove once again that communal violence in our country is engineered mostly by politicians and political parties.2
  The most significant feature of the Muzaffarnagar riots is that they took place between the Jats and Muslims with a toll (…)

• How Spread of Bt Cotton Contaminates the Food Chain

  1 October 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  While hazardous GM technology was allowed to be spread more easily in cotton on the ground that it is a non-food crop, it is clear that when cattle, sheep, goats etc. feed on Bt cotton residues, then health hazards also spread to the entire food-chain.
  According to the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, “Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) toxin in its natural, non-GM form, when used as an insecticidal spray, behaves differently in the environment than Bt toxin produced in GM plants. (…)

• Fourth Estate, Event Management and the Societal Interlude

  1 October 2013

  by Saket Bihari
  The Media: An Introduction
  The Fourth Estate is a spectacle par excellence that is hewn in the rationale of profit-seeking and rent-seeking and which remains a great deal intertwined with the rationale of the spawning of imageries. If one delves inside the thematic and objective pretext of KEDS (Events Data Research), then researchers are looking forth to the norm of creating and discovering events out of news which is where the real story of the media is. The Fourth (…)

• Democracy in Virtual Media

  1 October 2013

  by Satraajit Palchoudhury
  The twentyfirst century is the century of technology. The emergence of the new media has changed the dimension of media discourse in its totality. This version of the media is more interactive. In fact it will be apt to shower praise on the inventors of the new media. We have already seen the impact of the new media in totalitarian states like Egypt, Tunisia and to a certain extent in Russia where for the very first time Vladimir Putin in his chequred career (…)

• Paid News: An Advertisement of the Globalised Indian Parliament

  1 October 2013

  by Anil Chamadia
  The scourge of ‘paid news’ is not only the manifestation of growing deterioration of the Indian media institution as such. The economic policies pursued as consequent to globalisation have also exposed almost all institutions of parliamentary governance. Diagnosing the malady of ‘paid news’ afflicting the media outlets, a sub-committee of the Press Council of India (PCI) has described it as an expression of prevailing organised corrupt practices in the media world. But (…)

• West Bengal: Amended Jail Law marks Mamata’s Final Betrayal on Political Prisoners

  1 October 2013

  by Biswajit Roy
  Mamata Banerjee completed her about-turn over her pre-poll promise on the release of political prisoners in West Bengal at the fag end of August. Her government has now redefined the term through the passage of the West Bengal Correctional Services (Amendment) Bill 2013 in the State Assembly. It’s a Left Front-era irony that the notorious jails have been rechristened as ‘correctional homes’. The amendment of the WBCS Act of 1992 has not only denied the status of political (…)

• Inquilab Zindabad!

  1 October 2013, by Chaman Lal

  September 28, 2013 marks the immortal revolutionary martyr Bhagat Singh’s 106th birth anniversary. On this occasion we are publishing the following article written and sent for publication around March 23 this year to observe the eightysecond anniversary of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom. It could not be published then for unavoidable reasons.
  It is March 23 now on the clock, the most significant day for the revolutionary movement of not only India, but the whole of South Asia, at least as (…)

• Narendra Modi Should Not be Invited to Release Shahid Bhagat Singh’s Diary

  1 October 2013

  COMMUNICATION
  It has been reported in some newspapers today (September 20) that Narendra Modi has been invited to release Shahid Bhagat Singh’s diary in Delhi on September 29 (see Rashtriya Sahara, September 20). In my capacity both as convenor of the Shahid Bhagat Research Committee as well as a family member (Bhagat Singh’s nephew), I would like to state strongly that Narendra Modi should not be invited for this purpose.
  In these difficult times it is very important to understand the (…)

• Campus Space in the Age of Clicktivism: Exploring JNU Students Union Elections

  1 October 2013

  by Gaurav J. Pathania
  Student union elections in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) are festivals of ideological debates and democratic exuberance. This year’s election on September 13 gave a clear mandate to the radical Left group, the All India Students Association (AISA), with its victory over all four posts of the central panel. It defeated its main opponent, the Democratic Students Federation (DSF), with a margin of around a thousand votes. The National Students Union of India (NSUI) (…)