Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Hope Flickers in Dismal Setting

  2 September 2013, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As the latest developments in Syria threaten to snowball into another major crisis in the Arab world with the prospects of Western (read US) intervention in the country increasing with every passing day even as Russia and China are still stoutly opposing any such move and vetoeing in the Security Council any UN sanction for such attacks, the events on the national plane too have acquired considerable prominence of late.
  The rapid economic deterioration in the country, (…)

• Damaging a Basic Institution of Democracy

  2 September 2013

  by S. Krishnan and B.P. Mathur
  Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, has recently made a statement that the CAG is ill- equipped for conducting performance audit and lacks trained personnel for doing so and further that the performance audit conducted by him was not credible as it was done by accountants not trained for the same. (The Times of India, August 13, 2013) A few days earlier P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, blamed the former CAG for the (…)

• Convicted MPs Should Quit

  2 September 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Parliament is a temple of democracy. Members are its pujaris (priests). Their purity affects the temple’s purity. If the Members defile it, the reputation of temple goes down in the eyes of the people. They begin to doubt the belief it projects. Something similar is happening in the Indian Parliament, which has lost its lustre and does not evoke the confidence it once did. All types of ills are attributed to it. The same temple, the citadel of faith, has become a laughing stock.
  Still the (…)

• US General Wants to Learn from India

  2 September 2013, by Ninan Koshy

  General Raymond T. Odierno was in an upbeat mood. He had just returned from a visit to India. He was profuse in his praise for the Indian Army. He said the US Army had to learn a lot from its Indian counterpart.
  The US Army Chief of Staff visited India at the end of July. During that visit he met with defence leaders in India including his counterpart, the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Bikram Singh. He visited the Indian Army’s Northern Command, responsible for the borders with (…)

• A Macroeconomic View of the 
National Food Security Bill

  2 September 2013, by Arun Kumar

  The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has been contentious. Economic arguments have been presented against it confusing the public. The rich farmers are worried that farm prices would fall because cheap food would find its way into the markets. Businessmen argue that the economy would further slow down with an increase in the burden on the Budget. The elite say that subsidies and inflation would rise sharply due to profligacy. Unfortunately, most of these arguments are based on a partial (…)

• Anatomy of Kishtwar

  2 September 2013, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The recent outbursts of communal violence in Kishtwar, a remote town in Jammu and Kashmir, amply bear out the pathologies of our modernity. Rekha Chowdhary’s reading of the genesis of the town (The Hindu, August 17, 2013) and other media reports make our point evident.
  Kishtwar was known for its near idyllic inter-community relations till two decades back. The town represented an exemplary situation in 1947 when conscious collective efforts were made by the elders of both the Hindu and (…)

• Legislation Ensuring Basic Right to Food

  2 September 2013

  by Suranjita Ray
  A Historic Initiative
  The National Food Security Bill (NFSB), 2013, passed after a long debate in the Lok Sabha, and after a longer wait, is indeed a historic initiative to make the state responsible to ensure food security to 67 per cent of its population. Providing the citizens legal entitlement to food is a positive intervention of the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government, which has privileged the rights-based approach that has guaranteed a series of (…)

• Proposal for a Self-contained New Wakf Act for Normal Situation

  2 September 2013, by Syed Shahabuddin

  The Select Committee Report on the Wakf (Amendment) Bill, 2010 along with a draft law has been circulated. An Amendment Bill, one presumes, shall now be placed by the government before the Rajya Sabha and then it will go to the Lok Sabha. The Select Committee Report has led to much controversy, particularly on the alienation of Wakf property.
  Going through the history of Wakf Acts from 1954 to 1995, the present form of the Wakf Act was perhaps inevitable, as designed to protect the Wakf (…)

• Reflections On Our Time

  2 September 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The concluding functions that brought the curtain down on the year-long celebrations of the golden jubilee of the ‘Quit India’ struggle of 1942, presented in sharp relief the slump in morale allround.
  With all the exposures of mega corruption in which the wielders of power have been entangled, and the unashamed buying of MPs so that the reins of the government do not slip out of one’s hand—all the homilies and harangues at the August 9 celebrations sounded so hollow (…)

• Forest-dependant People, their Livelihood Challenges and Forest Rights Act: A Review

  2 September 2013

  by Madhusudan Bandi
  Experts are yet to reach consensus on the continued poverty of the natural resource users. However, it appears that the social systems from which they arise are structured so unequally that it justifies the Marxist view of environmental problems reflecting ‘unequal distribution of resources’ eluding a lasting solution. (Sachs, 1993) Even the so-called developed States in India could not extend the spoils of growth to this section of the population, indicating their (…)