Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Seoul Nuclear Security Summit: The World Needs More

  30 April 2012

  by VIVEK KUMAR SRIVASTAVA
  The origins of the nuclear security summit can be traced to the Prague speech delivered by Barrack Obama in April 2009. The Prague speech of the US President can be treated as the preliminary roadmap of Obama’s global nuclear security policy. This was a clear policy statement of the US Administration to deal with the most vital challenge to its national interest, checking the transfer of nuclear technology in the hands of terrorists and bringing the non-NPT (…)

• Today’s Trade Unionism

  30 April 2012

  by HARGOPAL SINGH
  May 1 is the International Workers Day. It is popularly known as May Day or Labour Day. Incidentally, May Day is also associated with some other events which have nothing to do with the labourers and workers. It has been regularly observed as a yearly feature by the trade unions since 1904 in most of the countries of the world although it was recognised as such in 1891 by the different organisations of the industrial workers. It was started so as to commemorate the (…)

• Children of God?

  30 April 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  WHEN an Australian editor posed a question to the Indian press why it never had a Dalit, the untouchable, at a top position in journalism, I felt embarrassed. I considered it an omission which should have been rectified long ago and felt confident that it would happen before long.
  But after noticing that no attention was paid a few days ago to the 121st anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, a Gandhi for the Dalits, I have come to believe that the discrimination against the Dalits is a (…)

• Whither National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL)?

  30 April 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  I wholeheartedly congratulate Mainstream on the publication of Ather Farouqui’s remarkable article on Urdu in its annual issue and the overwhelming response it has received, generating an unpre-cedented debate on the pathetic inactivity of the literary organisations of Left-wing parties, particularly the Progressive Writers Association. The issue of shoddy functioning of Urdu organisations in general has also remained unaddressed for years. The situation is, indeed, pathetic (…)

• India needs Islamic Banking for Inclusive Growth and Infrastructure Development

  30 April 2012

  by H. ABDUR RAQEEB
  The following is a response to Dr Ather Farouqui’s article “Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists” in Mainstream (Vol L, No 11, March 3, 2012). “Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists”, an article by Dr Ather Farouqui, is timely. It has evoked interest in the community as well as the country as a whole and a serious debate on the gaps and gains of Islamic finance and banking has started. Thus it has indeed turned to be a great (…)

• Meaning of Agni

  30 April 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  The week, that marked the twentyfifth anniversary of the passing away of Jawaharlal Nehru —on May 22, 1989, India projected a political image of its strength and determination before the world which no amount of borrowed arsenal could have achieved. The firing of the intermediate range missile, Agni, hitting a target a thousand kilometres away, was not just an engineering feat, its importance lies in the fact that it was designed and manufactured in India by our (…)

• Shutting the School Doors on the Muslim Child

  30 April 2012

  by HEM BORKER
  That a news report in The Hindu titled “In Delhi’s nursery classes, Muslim children are a rarity” (March 19, 2012), found mention in the Rajya Sabha the same day, leading to “heated arguments” and a “verbal duel” in the Upper House, is symptomatic of the polarisation of public discourse on the education of Muslims. Almost any discussion on the subject slides into binaries: religious versus secular, exclusion versus appeasement, rights versus politics, reality versus rhetoric, (…)

• Mainstreaming Equity in a World of Growth

  30 April 2012

  BOOK REVIEW
  by RICHA KUMAR
  Alternative Economic Survey—India: Two Decades of Neoliberalism by Alternative Survey Group; Daanish Books, New Delhi; 2011; pp. 466; Rs 450.
  For the last 20 years, the Alternative Economic Survey Group has brought out a compilation of essays in response to the government’s Economic Survey published around the time of the Budget. This has been an important annual intervention in the debates surrounding growth and develop-ment, bringing to the forefront (…)

• The First Kannada Saraswati Samman Awardee on Jawaharlal Nehru

  30 April 2012

  by N.S. RAGHUNATH
  Kannada, which was credited with the classical language status recently, seems to be walking away with every prestigious literary award the country has instituted. It has won eight Jnanpeeths, a Magasaysay (K.V. Subbanna), a Kalidas (B.V. Karanth), a Kabir (M.G. Adiga) and now the Saraswati Samman by S.L. Bhyrappa, which has given the people something to celebrate. It has made many a writer blissfully happy, but the benchmark for the Saraswati Samman, I’m afraid, has (…)

• Lenin

  30 April 2012, by Jawaharlal Nehru

  April 22 this year marked the 142nd birth anniversary of that immortal revolutionary, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On this occasion we remember him by reproducing the following excerpts from Nehru’s article on him that appeared in The Hindu (April 5, 1928).
  ‘I know a pair of eyes which have been for ever numbed by the burning sorrow of the Terror,’ said Gorky of Lenin. This sorrow did not leave him to the end. It made him a fierce fanatic and gave him the strength of will to persevere and (…)