Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Swami Vivekananda — A Masiha
 of the Masses

  7 July 2013, by Ajeet Jawed

  The following article is being published on the occasion of Swami Vivekananda’s one hundred and eleventh death anniversary on July 4. On January 12 this year we had observed his one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary.
  Nineteenth century India produced a number of eminent men and women who with their exceptional intellect and wisdom enriched different aspects of Indian life. The most important among them was Swami Viveka-nanda who in a short span of life, which lasted less than forty (…)

• Manmade Disaster Plays Havoc

  7 July 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Not long ago, a disaster in any part of the country would elicit national response. People would go door-to-door to collect money, clothes, utensils, medicines and many other things of daily use to transmit through agencies which were voluntarily engaged in relief and rehabilitation work. The attitude has changed in the last few years. People are, no doubt, concerned and sympathetic. But there is no countrywide effort to organise help. The atmosphere is no more animated with the zeal which I (…)

• Nature and Process of History in Indian Democracy

  7 July 2013, by Indrajeet Singh

  We do not drive history according to our own desires and wishes; rather history leads us with its force taking all kinds of species through the different stations and temporary destinations. There are a few historical moments when mankind is able to witness what it desires. History is perhaps not a straight line process but it consists of crooked lines which push humans into the vortex of pain, uncertainties and happy times. Only a handful of people take advantage of the happy moments of (…)

• Don’t belittle the Army, Mr Rambo-NaMbo

  7 July 2013

  by Priyanka Chaturvedi
  The news this week that no one would have possibly missed and debated is the one that appeared in a leading national daily. The headline shouted, “Narendra Modi lands in Uttarakhand, flies out with 15,000 Gujaratis”. Clearly, Mr Modi’s propaganda machinery was at work again and NaMo bhakts on social media were lapping it up—he was the biggest superhero this country, nay this planet, nay this universe had ever seen. But neither Mr Modi nor his bhakts realised the true (…)

• VVIP Trips to Uttarakhand and Kashmir

  7 July 2013, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  No, sir, aerial surveys won’t do in the Uttarakhand region. You cannot view disasters from that far away, safe positioning! You got to be right there amongst your people to try and reach out to them.
  It’s disgusting how the VVIPs are touring the devastated region in that detached sort of way at this stage when thousands have been killed and ruined. And it’s more than disgusting to know that even now these political creatures are making aerial surveys. As representatives of the (…)

• Erasing Enemies: America’s New Way of War

  7 July 2013, by Eddie J Girdner

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti; New York: Penguin Press; 2013.
  America has been at war for more than a decade. There is no end in sight to this new perpetual war. The battlefield is now the entire world. After 2001, the Bush Neoconservatives essentially declared a war against the entire globe, against whoever dared to oppose the Empire. In a larger sense, of course, this is but an extension of the war for (…)

• A Clarification

  7 July 2013, by Prabhat Patnaik

  COMMUNICATION
  I have become aware, very belatedly alas, of a piece by Comrade Sailendra Nath Ghosh (Mainstream, April 16, 2011), which takes me to task for an article of mine “Why the Left Matters” (Mainstream, March 26, 2011). The only reason I can adduce for not reading Comrade Ghosh’s article when it was published is that I was myself located at the time in Thiruvananthapuram, working for the State Planning Board of the LDF Government in Kerala, and had at best sporadic access to (…)

• Manmohan’s Progress

  7 July 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  With Parliament rounding off the general debate on the Budget, this is the point of time when certain reflections on the government’s presentation of the economic crisis before the nation may be in order.
  Right at the outset, there was both curiosity and appreciation on the Prime Minister having chosen a distinguished economist as his Finance Minister. An outsider in the arena of party politics, Dr Manmohan Singh raised expectations that he would present before the (…)

• Tribute: Balraj Mehta

  7 July 2013

  [(Veteran journalist Balraj Mehta, 92, passed away in New Delhi on June 19, 2013. He was suffering from a kidney ailment for some time. He is survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.
  A noted analyst of economic and financial developments, he was an outspoken critic of the policy of liberalisation ushered in by the then Finance Minister and present Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in 1991 and scathingly attacked it in his columns. He regularly contributed to the Economic and (…)

• Oppose IMF Way, Defend 
Economic Sovereignty

  7 July 2013

  The following is the statement issued by the Convention in Defence of Economic Sovereignty, sponsored by the Left parties, in New Delhi on July 19, 1991. —Editor
  The Convention in Defence of Economic Sovereignty, sponsored by the Left parties, categorically rejects the series or policy decisions announced by the Narasimha Rao Government to tackle the serious economic crisis facing the country. The two-step devaluation of the rupee by more than 20 per cent; the new trade policy measures; (…)