Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Growing Importance of Independent Journals

  15 February 2013, by Bharat Dogra

  At a time when increasing trends of corporatisation and heavy-handed commerciali-sation have led to the increasing alienation of the media from the real concerns of the people and society, small independent journals have an increasingly important role to play in arti-culating and representing the real concerns and needs of society. It is true that in a world increasingly dominated by big business interests the space available to such journals is shrinking. Indeed even the survival of several (…)

• The Mainstream Story

  15 February 2013, by Sumit Chakravartty

  An abridged version of the following piece constituted the author’s introductory remarks before the panel discussion on ‘Indian Media Scene Today: Potential and Reality’ to mark fifty years of Mainstream (that took place at the India International Centre, New Delhi on January 29, 2013).
  Mainstream first appeared on September 1, 1962. It owes its name to a well-known progressive US journal (currently defunct), Masses and Mainstream, which was at one time the voice of the other America and (…)

• Spectacle As Reality

  15 February 2013, by Mukul Dube

  I find myself in a state of mixed bewilderment and despair. I try to keep abreast of what happens in my part of the world, and what do I see? In Tamil Nadu a motion picture, part of the entertainment industry, becomes the centre of people’s universe. In the west, an intellectual says something to a small gathering and that causes tremors across the land. Neither of these provocations would have been nearly so effective when I was a young man. This seems to me the unreal reality in which we (…)

• The Road Not Taken By Tripura’s Left

  15 February 2013, by Basubrata Roy

  The tiny North-Eastern hilly State of Tripura is gearing up for the Assembly poll, slated to the held on February 14, 2013. The Left citadel of the region has hardly seen any anti-incumbency factor till now when the regime is on a sticky wicket with its employees getting a raw deal because of the denial of a new Pay Commission.
  Within no time the State Government school-teachers and the employees got united, cutting across political affiliations of the unions, to come under the banner of (…)

• Madanjeet Singh Is No More

  15 February 2013

  Former diplomat, artist, writer, photo-grapher and philanthropist, Madanjeet Singh 88, a UNESCO Goodwill Amba-ssador since 2000, passed away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France on January 6, 2013 following a stroke.
  He was a passionate advocate of South Asian regional cooperation and solidarity on a secular, democratic and progressive basis. His commitment to the cause of South Asian peace and harmony was backed by his extra-ordinary personal financial contribution to the South Asia (…)

• Wanted: Public Intervention

  5 February 2013, by SC

  As we approach our sixtyfourth Republic Day, the political class in the country has been gripped by an unprecedented crisis—the crisis of credibility. This has been recently witnessed in the unique spontaneity of the youth upsurge on the major streets and thoroughfares of Lutyens’ Delhi taking the ruling circles at the Centre completely by surprise thereby resulting in a panic reaction on the part of the latter—the indiscriminate use of force and coercion with lathis, teargas and water (…)

• Mahatma Gandhi

  5 February 2013, by Jawaharlal Nehru

  On the occasion of the sixtyfifth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom on January 30 this year, we offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory by reproducing excerpts from two speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru to explain Gandhiji’s significance before the US audience in October 1949.
  You know that during the last thirty years or so, we carried on rather intensively our campaign for India’s freedom. We did not begin it; it was there. It had been continued for genrations before us but it (…)

• Netaji on India after Independence

  5 February 2013

  On the occasion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 116th birth annivarsary on January 23 this year, we offer our homage to the memory of that indomitable freedom fighter by reproducing excerpts from one of his writings.
  A question which many people ask is as to what will happen when the British are forced to leave India. British propaganda has made many people think that without the British there will be anarchy and chaos in India. These people conveniently forget that British occupation (…)

• Rape and Punishment: Conservatives Exposed

  5 February 2013

  by ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER
  The rape of Nirbhaya (as the 23-year-old victim has been named by The Times of India) on the night of December 16 rightly raised grave concern about the safety of women in modern democratic India today. Thousands of women and men, especially women, came out on the streets of Delhi, Mumbai and several other cities to condemn the heinous crime against women and demanded change in law to make the punishment harsher than what it is.
  I fully sympathise with the concern (…)

• Couldn’t the PM Show Some Feelings in a Time of Strong Feelings?

  5 February 2013, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Of the many things that went wrong during the Big Bad Year 2012, which was the most upsetting? That’s not an easy question to answer because there were too many Big Bad Things that were disconcerting. Hopes were shattered and fears came true. Heroes developed clay feet, villains became kings. Politicians grew fat, mafia cronies fatter. Mango in-laws made jokes about aam admis.
  Consider Mamata Banerjee. A hugely popular leader, she was different from other politicians, living (…)