Mainstream Weekly

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• Where You Walk in Company...

  13 May 2012

  (Rabindranath Tagore’s 151st birth anniversary falls on Sunday (May 8, 2012) marking the conclusion of the celebrations that began with the 150th anniversary of his birth last year. We remember him and offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory on this occastion by reproducing the following poem, another poem (on page 9) and two articles (on pages 4 to 10 and page 12) that bring out some lesser known aspects of the Poet’s exceptionally creative activities. —Editor) where you walk in (…)

• Muktadhara’s Relevance

  13 May 2012, by Amiya Dev

  A Tagore play that has a lot of relevance today is Muktadhara (‘The Waterfall’ in his own translation, both dated 1922). It is set in the open—in fact its original title was Path or ‘Way’—on the road to Lord Bhairava’s temple in a hilly country, with a quick shift of actors. The occasion is the completion of a dam, a marvel of engineering. People have come to celebrate it and felicitate its builder, Bibhuti, or have come out of curiosity in it or to bemoan their loss in its (…)

• Sketching Tagore as a Social Activist and Social Reformer

  13 May 2012, by Arup Maharatna

  In celebrating the 150th birth anniversary year of the giant poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore, it would be no small a tribute if we recall, recognise, and evaluate him more adequately and comprehensively than ever before as an activist who had remained in his entire creative life immensely concerned, tirelessly active, and deeply thoughtful about rural material poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, superstitions, and such other social evils in our country, and also about the ideals and notions (…)

• The Toilers

  13 May 2012

  As I look around this dear old earth I see the vast wave of common mass traversing by diverse ways the endless track from life to death, urged on by common human needs from times immemorial. It is they that row and they that sit at the helm. It is they that sow the seeds and they that toil at the harvest. They remain the same through ages —the toilers. The spectres snap, the war-drums beat no more, columns of victory stand in stupid silence, bloodshot eyes and bloodstained (…)

• A Window for Peace

  13 May 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  India and Pakistan are seldom on the same page. Partly, it is because they carry the baggage of tragic history and partly because they have no trust in each other. Above all, there is a general perception in India that since the Army is a decisive factor in the affairs of Pakistan, it is not possible to foster any meaningful relation-ship until it becomes a democratic polity in the real sense. In fact, from the time General Moham-mad Ayub Khan took over the reins of Pakistan in 1958, India (…)

• Moratorium on Bt Brinjal

  13 May 2012, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  On February 9, 2010, the then Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on the introduction of Bt Brinjal in India. It is necessary and desirable to quote the order verbatim. It reads as follows:
  It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjals till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, (…)

• Give Top Priority to Avoiding Irreversible Loss

  13 May 2012, by Bharat Dogra

  ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION
  While several environmental threats and losses require our immediate and urgent atten-tion, top priority should be given to those large-scale threats which are of an irreversible nature. In the case of such threats, once the damage has been done it may not be possible to reverse or undo the damage. The harm to the environment may then be not just large-scale but in addition it is also likely to be permanent. Of course, the biggest worldwide threat of climate change (…)

• Indian Economy: A Rocking Horse Galloping Forward

  13 May 2012, by Kobad Ghandy

  [This is the first of a four-part article on the current state of the Indian economy by Kobad Ghandy. The author is a Marxist/Maoist thinker, incarcerated in Tihar Jail; he has written two books: one on the Indian economy (Globalisation: Attack on India’s Sovereignty, 2004) and the other on the world economy (Capitalism in Coma, 2009).]
  In mid-September last year, the Union Cabinet approved the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. On March 15 this year, the Finance Minister (…)

• National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) Idea: A Western Replica

  13 May 2012

  by JAYAN P.A.
  “Though the country and the people may be divided into different States for convenience of administration, the country is one integral whole, its people a single people living under a single imperium derived from a single source.” —Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman, Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India
  The creation of a new institutional mechanism for tackling terrorism—is this a different or peculiar kind of problem in addressing the question of terrorism? Does it (…)

• The Federal Dialogue

  13 May 2012, by Amna Mirza

  Dynamic Centre-State interactions are a defining yardstick of a federal set-up. The Indian federal dialogue has got a new fillip recently as seen from the nuanced way in which States have come forward to let the Union factor in their demands and grievances. This article tends to trace the interaction of the process of federalism and globalisation and attempts to make a plea for building constitutional structures of inter-governmental relations to streamline this Centre-State balance. India (…)