Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Dangerous Trend

  4 March 2012

  COMMUNICATION
  Amitava Mukherjee in his “West Bengal Notebook” (Mainstream, February 25, 2012) has gone overboard in showering unnecessary praise on Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal CM, when she should have been roundly criticised for being instrumental in not allowing the formal release of Taslima Nasreen’s latest Bengali book, Nirbasan (Exile), at the Kolkata Book Fair. By doing so she has showed, beyond doubt, that she would capitulate before Muslim fanatics in order to maintain her (…)

• Need for Indo-Russian Partnership in BMD

  4 March 2012

  by T.R. SUBRAMANIAN
  China is rapidly developing its capabilities to launch anti-ballistic and anti-satellite missiles (ABMs and ASMs). This could tilt the regional balance in the not-too-distant future thereby endangering India’s security.
  Against this backdrop it is imperative for New Delhi to enhance its defence potential and thus safeguard the nation from Beijing’s strategic weapons. It should not be taken in by China’s sweet-talk at the diplomatic level no matter what certain (…)

• The Wild Animals of Politics have Sensed that the Day of Reckoning is Here

  4 March 2012, by T J S George

  This week the citizens of India can look at themselves and say: It’s going to be all right. The second freedom struggle—for freedom from corruption—is beginning to show some signs of a satisfactory solution. The rise of public opinion in spontaneous response to Anna Hazare’s campaign was the first sign that our country had the inner strength to stand up to the corrupt. Now the judiciary has helped restore a sense of sobriety and balance to a scene vitiated by wreckless corruption. Not that (…)

• Timely Invervention

  27 February 2012, by SC

  There have been several sordid incidents in recent days. Besides the ‘porngate’ in Karnataka, the rape of a young Anglo-Indian lady in Kolkata (that hogged the headlines because of certain remarks by the West Bengal CM considered to be insensitive) and the unprovoked firing by Italian Navy marines killing two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala have caused widespread concern. Secularists have been dismayed not just due to the return to power of the Shiv Sena in the Brihanmumbai (…)

• How War on Terror triggers Renewed Terror

  27 February 2012, by T J S George

  Caught between anti-corruption hypocrisies and pre-election manipulations, we are failing to notice the gathering clouds of a new kind of terrorism. Many perceptive observers had commented that America’s “war on terror” would in fact inflame terrorism instead of containing it. Is that happening already?
  It is clear that hatred of America has intensified among those who were targeted by the war on terror. In spite of the civilian government, handpicked and installed by the US in Baghdad, (…)

• Church and Education in Kerala

  27 February 2012, by V Mathew Kurian

  I. Introduction
  Education is critically important to social development. According to Amartya Sen, it helps in building up human capabilities. Educational attainment is one of the main criteria in indexing human development. Among Indian States, Kerala stands at the top in the Human Develop-ment Index. From a historical perspective, the unique contributions of Churches towards this, particularly in the domains of education and health, are indisputable.
  Though education as a ‘merit good’ (…)

• New Questions in Naya Bihar: The Cry of Vernacular Academics

  27 February 2012, by Dev N Pathak

  “I wonder whether Nitish Kumar is an offshoot of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement; he seems to have emerged from Laloo Yadav’s movement,” said Prof Nawal Kishor Chaudhury, with a wink of sarcasm, in an informal conver-sation during a seminar in Saharsa (Bihar). Prof Chaudhury, an economist of eminence, affiliated with Patna University, had to disclose another barbed wit, that he turned down the offer of ascending to the position of Vice-Chancellor of one of the old universities in Bihar. For, (…)

• Electoral Mandate, Fake Encounters and Rule of Law

  27 February 2012

  by R.B. SREEKUMAR
  The Apex Court order (January 25, 2012) entrusting the inquiry to a retired Supreme Court judge, Justice M.B. Shah, of all 21 extra-judicial killings by the Gujarat Police from October 2002 to December 2006, is welcomed by all law-abiding citizens. This has confirmed the representation of the human rights activists that the Narendra Modi Government, since the days of the anti-minority carnage following the gruesome killing of 59 Hindus on February 27, 2002 in a train fire (…)

• Analysing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota

  27 February 2012, by Khalid Anis Ansari

  I
  The recent announcement of a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for backward sections within minorities in the overall Central OBC quota by the UPA Government on December 22, 2011 in the wake of elections in five States, including the crucial State of Uttar Pradesh, has drawn in a number of reactions, some valid and others not.
  Even though the media has often presented the sub-quota as one for the minorities, or in extreme cases a quota for Muslims by default, thereby providing wind to the wings (…)

• Saramago’s Candid Comments

  27 February 2012, by Girish Mishra

  It is quite often said in India that a person loses his enthusiasm and vigour and the capacity to struggle against odds and acts of injustice as he becomes older. This, however, never applied to the Portuguese literary giant, Jose Saramago. Born in a poor landless family on November 16, 1922, he actively participated in struggles against dictatorship and oppression in his own country and lent his voice to resistance against injustice wherever he saw it. He never, for once, wavered till his (…)