Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Honouring Ambedkar

  14 April 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS April 14 this year marks the 121st birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. On this occasion we are reproducing the following piece by N.C. and a few relevant articles to offer our sincere homage to the abiding memory of that towering personality.
  The award of the Bharat Ratna posthumously on B.R. Ambedkar raises mixed feelings. No doubt Ambedkar was one of the stalwarts of modern India; the high-water mark of his career was that he contributed most to (…)

• Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Neoliberal Economic Reforms

  14 April 2012, by Anand Teltumbde

  When the International Monetary Fund and World Bank-dictated neoliberal policy package was adopted by the Narasimha Rao Government in July 1991, with a false projection to the people that those were homegrown economic reforms, albeit with a Thatcherite apologia that ‘there was no alternative’, many intellectuals, whether they understood economics or not, vied with each other in supporting it to get into the good books of the government. Economics has by and large been an outcaste in Dalit (…)

• Merit, a Curse for Dalits? Elucidation of Discrimination

  14 April 2012, by A K Biswas

  Part-I
  Blazing Bullets greeted Dalit Merit!
  An English daily, February 28, 2012 dateline Chandigarh, reported a chilling incident under the caption, “Upper caste boys kill boy from lower caste for ‘topping class’”. That efflorescence of talent and excellence could bring in its train a tragedy so tormenting in dimension is not only shocking but unbelievable also. However, this is the truth. Merit does invite blazing bullets in India, if it does not manifest itself in the comely social (…)

• Are there Limits to Bahujan Politics?

  14 April 2012

  by K.S. CHALAM
  The recent election results in five States, particularly in the largest State of India, Uttar Pradesh, induced political pundits to make different conjectures. One important message, according to some, is that UP is becoming another Tamil Nadu, making the national parties redundant in State politics. This may be a farfetched hypothesis that needs serious empirical study following Indian approaches of understanding a local phenomenon. It is also pointed out that the Bahujan (…)

• China and India — A Comparative Study of Economic Growth

  14 April 2012, by P R Dubhashi

  BOOK REVIEW
  Awakening Giants – Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India by Pranab Bardhan; Princeton University Press; 2010; cloth: $ 25.95 (£17.95).
  The rapid rate of economic growth in the two large countries of Asia – China and India – stands in striking contrast to the Western world’s developed countries’ feeble growth rate. The dis-appointing growth rate was compounded by recession which struck in the USA in 2008 and spread to the countries of Europe. They are (…)

• A Pakistani Compares—Hindus in Sindh with Muslims in UP

  14 April 2012, by T J S George

  DEMOCRACY’S DYNAMICS
  This week I happily yield space to a thinker from Pakistan. He has analysed recent events in a refreshing way, reminding us that behind the terrorist minority that has hijacked Pakistan, there is a sober majority that dreams of progress and the warmth of the human spirit.
  Tahir Mehdi works with the Punjab Lok Sujag, a research and advocacy group focusing on the governance and democracy. He is a blogger who appears in Dawn, Jinnah’s newspaper. The newness of his (…)

• Dawn Over Burma?

  13 April 2012, by SC

  In the midst of the murky national developments—capped by the sensational report of the movement of two Army units in the direction of the Capital without any notification (that invited a chorus of denials from the PM, Defence Minister, Defence Secretary, Ministry of Defence to the Army)—as well as major international events—like the US decision to slap a $10 million bounty on terror-mastermind and founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed—the most heartening news of recent times (…)

• Oldest Communist Party elects a New General Secretary

  13 April 2012

  COMMENTARY
  The Communist Party of India, the oldest Communist Party in the country whose birth took place in Kanpur in December 1925, has held its Twentyfirst Congress in Patna. The CPI-M, which surfaced much later in October 1964 and whose founders decided to advertise their Marxist credentials in the name of the party in order to differentiate it from the parent organisation, is currently holding its Twentieth Congress in Kerala’s Kozhikode.
  Just before the Twentyfirst Congress, the (…)

• Defence Preparedness: Learning from the Past

  13 April 2012, by S G Vombatkere

  Leaked Letter
  The media is full of Army Chief General V.K. Singh writing to the PM that India’s Army is unprepared for war in terms of weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is undoubtedly extremely serious. That the communication was leaked is even more serious. It is vital to find out who leaked that communication. It is unrealistic to interpret this leak as “retaliation” by a man frustrated at having lost his year-of-birth case in the Supreme Court. Let us not imagine that the General (…)

• A Dangerous Turn

  13 April 2012, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  An ominous stage has been reached in Indian politics—a danger signal for our democracy. By the amazing folly of the government, the former Chief of the Army Staff has been dragged to the centre-stage of a nationwide controversy over a magnum size bribery in which the Prime Minister and people in his immediate proximity inescapably figure.
  General Sundarji’s bombshell disclosure in an interview to India Today about the Prime Minister’s refusal to turn the screw on the (…)