Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Chilling Scenes in Delhi: Disturbing Response of the Authorities

  5 February 2013, by Rajindar Sachar

  It appears to me that in India we are rushing on that route envisaged by Rousseau. This foreboding I am getting because of the latest situation in Delhi where the well-intentioned non-political young generation (who still retain faith and idealism) people were brutally dealt with by the police while protesting against the manner in which the horrible inhuman gang-rape of a young woman has been casually dealt with by the Delhi and Central governments.
  One sees the horrible chilling scenes (…)

• Protests and Prospects

  2 February 2013, by Ajay K. Mehra

  Even before Delhi and India got into the festive mood for the dawning of another New Year, 2013, the young girl who fell victim to the lust of six lascivious barbarous men, one of whom only in his teens, breathed her last in a Singapore Hospital, where she was sent for specialised treatment by the government. Not satisfied with fulfilling their lust, the six brutalised her body in such beastly manner that neither her willpower, that gave her the name ‘Nirbhaya’ (fearless), nor all the (…)

• Blood at the Border

  2 February 2013, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is an unfortunate coincidence that the border clashes and ceasefire violations between India and Pakistan have been at a time when Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had signed the Tashkent Declaration some 37 years ago to bind the two countries into a peace pact. He consecrated it with his death. Yet the Declaration could not avert the 1971 war, nor the subsequent skirmishes.
  Strange, there was not even a mention of the Declaration either by the media or by the political leadership. (…)

• What We Defend in Kashmir

  2 February 2013, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The valiant defence of the Motherland by our armed forces as well as by the brave people of Jammu and Kashmir has inspired the nation. The grim determination of the people of this country not to rest till Pakistani aggression is completely vacated and it is ensured that there will be no recurrence of violation of our frontiers was fully reflected in the President’s message and in the Prime Minister’s broadcast to the nation.
  The entire people of this country realise (…)

• India and Pakistan: Between Hawks and Peaceniks
is there a Middle Path?

  2 February 2013, by S G Vombatkere

  The beheading and mutilation of the bodies of L/Nk Hemraj and L/Nk Sudarshan Singh by Pakistani soldiers on January 8, 2013, is yet another barbaric act by Pakistan’s Army, following several earlier ones. [Ref. 1, Note 1] It is not unlike the acts of medieval armies or armed raiders, whose aim was to strike terror into the hearts of people. However, if such is the intention of the Pakistani Army, their latest barbaric act, far from striking terror or fear, is enraging the Indian public. This (…)

• Socio - Political Views of Vivekananda

  2 February 2013

  January 12, 2013 marked Swami Vivekananda’s one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary. We remember that outstanding personality on this occasion by reproducing some excerpts from Binoy K. Roy’s Socio-Political Views of Vivekananda (published by People’s Publishing House, New Delhi in November 1970).
  by BINOY K. ROY
  At the crossroads of two epoch-making centuries, when restless Europe was convulsing, on the one hand, under the far-flung tentacles of the greedy, shameless imperialists who (…)

• Questions of Freedom and People’s Emancipation — VI

  2 February 2013, by Kobad Ghandy

  Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail has been writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile socialist states. This comprises a series of six articles. The first article (covering Part I—The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012), the second one (covering Part II—Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 issue, the (…)

• A Reluctant Civil Servant!

  2 February 2013, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  BOOK REVIEW
  Making Sense of Bihar—An Autobiography of a Civil Servant of Bihar by Shree Shankar Sharan; Abhinav Publications, New Delhi; 2012; pages: 426; Price: Rs 500.
  If one wanted to read the usual stuff generally contained in the autobiography of a civil servant, where “I” dominates the whole write-up, one would miss it in this book. Witty, simple, humble, self-effacing as he was in his real life, Shree Shankar Sharan in this book reveals more of the contemporary social and (…)

• Women Self-Help Groups from Home Courtyard to State Secretariat

  2 February 2013

  by BIJU B.L. and ABHILASH KUMAR K.G.
  Women’s movements in Kerala reflect the value system, demands and methods of agitations of different strands of feminism. Socialist feminism is not dominant in spite of the lofty membership in the women’s wing of the CPI-M. The debates related to third generation feminism and its subversive politics are principally confined to women intellectuals and celebrities. At present, it resembles a powerful intellectual consortium. Its influence in fairly (…)

• Putin’s Visit to India — Advantage Russia

  2 February 2013

  by R.G. GIDADHUBLI
  Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India on December 25, 2012, though very brief, is an evidence of the fact that India is on his priority list to promote his global geopolitical and geo-economic objectives. No doubt Germany on the West and China on the East apart from Kazakhstan in the ‘Near Abroad’, which he has already visited after taking over his third term of presidency in May 2012, are more crucial from Russia’s perspective and interest than India. But (…)