Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• The Gift

  27 May 2013, by Sagari Chhabra

  This month marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Pokhran II nuclear explosions. On this occasion we are carrying the following excerpts from the play that appeared in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-monthly Journal), September-October 2011. These are being published with due acknowledgement and the playwright’s permission.
  Synopsis of the First Act of The Gift
  The play is set in a capital city. The Minister of Defence announces, ‘The Buddha is Smiling’ at a press conference. In (…)

• Pak Poll Outcome: Beyond Jingoist Rhetoric

  18 May 2013, by SC

  The May 11 elections in Pakistan have produced a decisive verdict. Belying the anticipation of a hung parliament or a coalition government, former PM Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N has won a handsome victory. According to latest figures, the PML-N has won 123 seats, followed by the PPP 32, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) 27, Independents 26, MQM 18, Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rahman 10, PML-F 4, Jamaat-e-Islami 3, Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party 2, PML-Q of former military ruler (…)

• India and Pakistan Must Exchange Prisoners

  18 May 2013, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  To mark or start new beginnings, Dr Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif should not send mangoes to each other, but exchange imprisoned men. Yes, Indian prisoners held captive in Pakistani jails ought to be sent back, to be tried and imprisoned here. And Pakistani prisoners languishing in our jails here, ought to be sent back, with a footnote that they’d serve those remaining years of their sentence in the jails of their home country.
  The killings of Sarabjit and Sanaullah inside the (…)

• Tribute: Asghar Ali Engineer

  18 May 2013, by SC

  On Tuesday, May 14, 2013, passed away in Mumbai Asghar Ali Engineer, 74, after a brief illness. He leaves behind his son and daughter.
  He was the Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies in the city and ran the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS) there. He was also the patron of the All India Secular Forum set up in 2002 when the Gujarat pogrom in particular and the communal forces in general were threatening the secular fabric of society. This Forum had rejected the (…)

• A Lost Opportunity

  18 May 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  Believe it or not, the Supreme Court gave the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) an opportunity to be independent in one of the matters before it, asking the agency why it was not independent. Yet the CBI failed to grab the chance with both hands. It had a foolproof case against Law Minister Ashwani Kumar when he amended the report on the coal blocks allotment scandal. The government’s blatant interference resulted in a “corrected draft”, exactly the way the Law Minister wanted the report (…)

• Politics even in the Tragedy of Death

  18 May 2013, by Rajindar Sachar

  Many great men, sickened by the way the contemporary society behaves, have been exas-perated to give vent to their harshest feelings. Author Samuel Johnson remarked: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a Scoundrel.”
  I had thought that Johnson was unfair to overwhelming number of ordinary citizens who were, in the true sense, patriots. I was willing to concede that if he had used the word “Politics” instead, I might have gone along with him, especially when I read what V. Lenin said: “There (…)

• Guilty at the Top

  18 May 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  So, the fat is at last in the fire.
  The concern over the blatant speculation in the share-market which has shaken the country had to come over our Finance Minister only in driblets and that too after tremendous pressure in Parliament.
  Our Finance Minister did know that the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex began to shoot up instantly with his Budget, to the great applause of the brokers and their colluding bankers. That was the time when the Chairman of the National (…)

• When the Voter is Treated as a Fool, Beware the Ire of the 99 per cent

  18 May 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  This piece was written before the Karnataka Assembly elections.
  The larger picture casts doubt on the very viability of democracy in our country. As the world knows it, democracy is a government of the ordinary people, by fairly elected people, for the good of all people. To some extent, we had that kind of democracy in the first few years of independence. What we have today is a govern-ment of manipulators, by manipulators, for manipulators.
  With every election the (…)

• Long-run Foreign Investors: Are they Easy Nuts to Crack?

  18 May 2013, by Anshuman Gupta

  Recently the Finance Minister was on a tour to Europe to lure the foreign investors to invest in India. Some years back, India was among the preferred destinations for the foreign investors. However, that is no more the case. If one attempts to verify it through figures, foreign direct investment (FDI) has been at an all-time low during the last two years. India’s current account deficit (CAD) is at an all-time high as a proportion of the GDP, and this is being met mainly through portfolio (…)

• Kerry couldn’t set Moscow River on Fire

  18 May 2013, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The foreplay of the Russian-American high-level exchanges can be very revealing. This time too the two sides indulged in some robust shadow-play in the run-up to the overnight “working visit” of the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, to Moscow on May 7.
  Kerry’s talks produced a significant result with Washington and Moscow agreeing on a “road map” for the resolution of the Syrian crisis. Part of the reason why the perception of a “breakthrough” formed almost instan-taneously is (…)