Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Assassination of an Activist: Who Killed Dr Narendra Dabholkar?

  8 September 2013, by Subhash Gatade

  TRIBUTE
  “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” —Albert Einstein
  Words have an uncanny ability of impinging on the receiver with clinical detachment. It is upto the receiver to unpack them or try to derive meaning out of them. It is still difficult to get over the sense of grief and shock one experienced when one received the news of the assasination of the renowned rationalist, Dr Narendra (…)

• Who Sows the Wind? And who Reaps the Whirlwind?

  8 September 2013, by Apratim Mukarji

  How does one explain the widespread trepidation that prevails in many countries over the fast-approaching date (end-2014) for the withdrawal of the NATO troops and Inter-national Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan? Principally, it is Afghanistan and regional countries, such as, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Central Asian Republics, China and Russia which are visibly perturbed over the probable consequences of the intended withdrawal of the foreign forces from direct ground-level (…)

• Another Demarcation on the Map

  8 September 2013, by Suranjita Ray

  The sparking of chaos and protests across the country with the announcement to divide Andhra Pradesh is not surprising. Protests in the streets of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema region against the division, and reassertions of the long pending demand for separate States in Assam and West Bengal, were expected.1 The last few decades have experienced several such social turmoils, many a time resulting in violence.
  While both the ruling and the opposition political parties (at the Centre, (…)

• A True Man of the Masses

  8 September 2013

  TRIBUTE
  by Bishwajit Sen
  The murder of Comrade Bindeshwari Sah on August 7 last, marked a definite turn in the Maoist politics of Bihar. It exposed a Maoist-police-landlord nexus which had been existing since a long time but had not been exposed as yet. But now with the land struggle reaching a qualitatively new stage, the hidden secrets of the ruling class are coming out the into the open. The pro-people and anti-people forces are positioning themselves for a decisive combat. (…)

• IAS Must Assert Itself

  8 September 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is at the apex to run the country’s administration. It replaced the Indian Civil Service (ICS) which was an instrument in the hands of the British to rule over India. After independence, there was serious thinking whether there should be an all-India service at all. The States wanted persons from their own area to administer.
  But, then Home Minister Sardar Patel was particular to have an all-India service to articulate the feeling of unity and to (…)

• Fifty Years of Martin Luther King Jr’s "I Have A Dream"

  8 September 2013

  by Krishnakumar S.
  The March to Washington For Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, fifty years back, was an unprecedented assertion of the Afro-Americans who were discriminated against in their own country, despite the tall promises made on equality through the Emancipation Proclamation during Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency, after the American Civil War.
  History was made with the celebrated speech of Martin Luther King Jr.—”I Have A Dream”—that drew the attention of the world to the (…)

• Amoral Politicians Create a Culture where Values Fall and Rapes Rise

  8 September 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Our Supreme Court asked what citizens have been asking for a while: Why is there such a sharp rise in rape cases across the country? “We are shocked,” said a two-judge Bench. “What has gone wrong with our society? What is wrong with the system now? Is it the total failure of social values, the lack of law, or is it that law enforcement is not working well?”
  For the politicians who do not bother about such questions, here is “good” news: India is not the worst case in crimes (…)

• SC Rulings and Citizens’
 Fundamental Rights

  8 September 2013, by Barun Das Gupta

  COMMUNICATION
  Recently, the Supreme Court has given two rulings—one denying the right of a person to continue as an MP, MLA or MLC once he has been convicted in a criminal case, and the other denying the right of a person in police or judicial custody to stand for election and even to exercise his franchise in an election. The Supreme Court’s intention is very clear and laudable, namely, to decriminalise politics by preventing anyone who has a criminal conviction or a criminal case pending (…)

• A Moving Cultural, Regional,
Emotional Experience

  8 September 2013

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Taisha Abraham
  Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti; Harper Collins India; pages: 406; price: Rs 350.
  Reading Aruna Chakravarti’s Jorasanko, as a non-Bengali, was a cultural and regional experience. Along with the seven-year-old bride of Satyendranath, Genu, we too enter the spacious Tagore household amidst ululation, conch-blowing, the “clamour of pipes and kettle drums” and intoxicated by the “delicious aroma of ghee, and spices” emerging from the cooking pits. There is an (…)

• Justice for Maruti Workers

  8 September 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  There has been a growing feeling among citizens dedicated to justice and workers’ rights that the Maruti workers have been the victims of several injustices in recent years. Some reports on the working conditions which prevailed here and gave rise to unrest among workers have indicated that the working conditions were so tight and rigid as to create health hazards for the workers. The injustices faced by the non-regular, contract workers were the most acute. They received (…)