Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Mishra or Yeddyurappa, it’s the Same Game: Parties Live for Today, Ignore Tomorrow

  13 April 2012, by T J S George

  Not all High Commands are the same. The originator of the system in India, Indira Gandhi, enforced it with shock and awe. Congressmen, however exalted, were trained to see their High Command the way vassals see their master. Only one Chief Minister, the late Rajasekhara Reddy, could do things without trembling before the High Command. Even he kept up pretences, never publicly defying the almighties.
  The BJP is a party with a difference. Nobody trembles before the High Command. Many (…)

• Inside Pakistan

  13 April 2012, by Kuldip Nayar

  Pakistan has changed in some ways since my last visit one year ago. Terrorism is absent from most parts of the country. Punjab has not experienced even a single incident in the last 15 months or so. Above all, terrorism is no more a topic in any discussion. I did not see any armed security person on the streets of Lahore. Still people do feel uneasy and even insecure, but appear to have reconciled to the circumstances and conditions.
  In the same way, the Taliban do not figure in the daily (…)

• India-Pakistan: Advocating Accommodation

  13 April 2012

  by ALI AHMED
  What to make of Pakistan is up to its 180 million citizens. However, what they make of Pakistan is consequential to its neighbours. Therefore, if India wants Pakistan to go along a certain direction, then it must go down the route ‘with’ Pakistan.
  India wants the dividend of a democratic peace, which means getting Pakistan to take the right choices away from extremism and military dominance. India has not succeeded so far. This owes to the internal political complexion of (…)

• Subterfuge and Lies Spelling Doom for the Congress

  13 April 2012, by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

  The Age of Brazening Out
  It was a sunny morning in Delhi, just a couple of hours through an interesting day of counting of votes polled in five States, including UP. As the first trends of the election started pouring in, a Congress leader with a not-so-trustworthy track-record appeared on a national channel to break the secret: the High Command would soon take a final call on whom to ally with, SP or BSP.
  That the Congress was secretly toying with such ideas was not unknown to the (…)

• Democracy, Development, Politics

  13 April 2012, by K Saradamoni

  We are very proud of our Democracy. We are equally proud that “We the People” have given unto ourselves a Constitution that ensures the noble aspects of democracy. We have even incorporated Socialism and Secularism into the Constitution. We have a Parliament to which women and men above the age of 18 vote for the candidate of their choice. We boast of the “Pillars of our Democracy”, the Legislature, Executive, Judiciary, and Press which we consider as Independent. Even when large sections of (…)

• Gutsy Women who Stand Out

  13 April 2012, by Humra Quraishi

  Are you finally over with all those picnics, tea parties and seminar sessions on the so-called International Women’s Day? Are you through with those supposed who’s who—those VVIP spouses, indulging in those frilly tamasha events on that day and on those so many other days of the year?
  Now sit back and ponder. And with that feel somewhat ashamed of the insensitivity hovering around, blinding us from seeing and sensing women with grit. Aren’t we being plain silly in bypassing the actual (…)

• Systemic Defects in Capitalism

  13 April 2012, by P R Dubhashi

  BOOK REVIEW
  23 Things they Don’t Tell You about Cpitalism by Ha-Joon Chang; Penguin Publisher, London; January 2011; pages: 304; Hardcover Price: $ 25.
  Through his two thought provoking books, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) and Bad Samaritans—Rich Nations, Poor Policies and Threat to the Developing World, Han Joon Chang, the Korean economic historian teaching at Cam-bridge University over the last twenty years, has emerged as an inveterate (…)

• In the Age of Climate Change and WMDs: How do We Need to Change?

  13 April 2012, by Bharat Dogra

  For thousands of years human beings, who reflected on the purpose of human life and reasons of distress, came to the conclusion that our life needs to change in very significant ways. At various levels they spoke against exploitation, injustice, violence, wars, over-indulgence in sensual pleasures by a few, the roots of this in socio-economic inequalities, the lack of concern for other forms of life and destructive attitudes towards nature.
  I tried to capture the essence of all these (…)

• Energy Security

  13 April 2012, by Bharat Jhunjhunwala

  The energy crisis appears to be deepening. The global price of oil is increasing. United States’ President Obama has blamed this on higher consumption by India and China. Growing global energy shortage has encouraged coal-exporting countries like Indonesia and Australia to up the export price of coal. We have limited domestic sources of energy. Our coal reserves are expected to last about 150-200 years but speedier consump-tion of this would lead to a deeper crisis after the domestic sources (…)

• Bismillah through the Motions

  13 April 2012, by Mukul Dube

  For some years now I have been going to protest demonstrations and meetings and seminars to take photographs which can then be used on the Internet and in other ways. In this work I try not to be sectarian: I go where I find myself agreeing with the issues being raised and pay no attention to personal and narrow political disagreements. My reasoning is that I must contribute time and labour to causes with which I am in sympathy, and that this is the most logical way to do that at a time when (…)