Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• We Are All Occupiers

  9 December 2011, by Arundhati Roy

  People the World Over Salute the Occupy Movement for Standing Up to Injustice and Fighting for Equality at the Heart of Empire
  Tuesday morning (November 15), the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We’re not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.
  What you have achieved since (…)

• Even the Mahavishnu of Market Economy Cannot Equate Slumdogs with Tycoons

  9 December 2011, by T J S George

  Trust deficit is an expressive phrase. But it is applied only to India-Pakistan relations. It is just as relevant in describing people-government relations in India. The trust deficit on this front was highlighted by two recent statements. The first was by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who said in Cannes that food prices shot up in India because of prosperity.
  Less than half the population of India is prosperous. The other half-and-more is at varying levels of misery. A few hundred (…)

• The Story of Sister Valsa John (1958-2011)

  9 December 2011

  TRIBUTE
  “The following story was narrated by one of Sister Valsa John’s long-term associates to a Jesuit priest. It was written by the latter and then edited by me. This is the inspiring story of Sr. Valsa John, an ordained nun, who worked among the Santal tribals of Jharkhand for over fifteen years—first as a school teacher and then as a human rights activist—until her brutal murder on November 15, 2011. It provides an insider’s view of the people’s resistance movement led by Sr. Valsa (…)

• The American Crisis

  9 December 2011, by Apratim Mukarji

  Earlier this year the Rasmussen opinion poll found, somewhat to its surprise, that as much as eleven per cent of Americans polled were saying that they would respond positively if the United States went communist.
  All over the country, throughout the length and bredth of which this author travelled for three months during August-October, scores of discussions, debates, writings, and of course public demonstrations (manifested most drama-tically in the “Occupy Wall Street” ones) were (…)

• Krishna Menon: Not Millstone but Milestone

  9 December 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  [The following is N.C.’s ‘New Delhi Skyline’, written precisely fortyfive years ago on November 29, 1966 and published in Mainstream (December 3, 1966). It is being reproduced now as it helps to understand the situation prevailing within the ruling Congress fortyfive years ago.]
  At one time Krishna Menon was an enigma to many in Indian politics. Today Krishna Menon has become the touchstone of political awareness for different groups at the power-centre of the (…)

• Turning the Corner in the Subcontinent

  9 December 2011, by Uttam Sen

  When the Pakistani Interior Minister announced in the Maldives early in November 2011 that the Indian Government was free to hang Muhammad Ajmal Kasab if it found him guilty,1 the trammelled big picture underscored the plight of the marginalised. There were voices that reminded the authorities that the law was meant to be an objective, discriminating, secular instrument based on universal standards rather than the assumed licence of a particular party to pick and choose who should be served (…)

• Remembering Delhi Declaration on a Non-Nuclear and Non-Violent World

  9 December 2011, by Arun Mohanty

  Twentyfive years have passed since the signing of the mostly-forgotten Delhi Declaration on a Non-Violent and Non-Nuclear World. The Delhi Declaration on a Non-Violent and Non-Nuclear World was truly a unique document that has been consigned to history quite unwisely at a time when it is most required. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had put their signatures on this significant document on November 27, 1986 at Delhi. This document was unprecedented in (…)

• A Farewell to Nuclear Arms

  9 December 2011

  by MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
  This article reached us last October but could not be used earlier. However, it is being published belatedly now as its contents are of persisting validity especially in the present context. —Editor
  Twentyfive years ago this month (October), I sat across from Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland to negotiate a deal that would have reduced, and could have ultimately eliminated by 2000, the fearsome arsenals of nuclear weapons held by the United States and the Soviet (…)

• Tahrir Square Unnerves US, Turkey

  9 December 2011, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The eruption of mass protests on Egypt’s Tahrir Square calling for an end to the rule by the military junta has put the United States and Turkey on the horns of a dilemma.
  Washington cannot overlook that the demand of the protestors is for democratic change and an end to the military rule. Indeed, the US wields enormous influence over the Egyptian military, which receives 5 billion dollars American military aid annually. But Washington will be averse to the military’s abdication of power. (…)

• Comrade in Introspection!

  9 December 2011

  INTERVIEW
  “After the fall of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala, no man is as worried as A.B. Bardhan, the General Secretary of the CPI. Today he is restless at the age of 88, despite the fact that his party did well compared to the other Left parties. But this legendary comrade needs no excuse…he is a man at work now with a new framework to retrieve the CPI as well as Left parties with the essential ground-touch, also eyeing to enter into the crucial psyche of the great Indian middle (…)