Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• India Delivers, It’s Obama’s Turn Now

  27 November 2011, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Timing is three-fourths in international diplomacy. The spectacular display of three happy coincidences on the eve of PM Manmohan Singh’s pow-vow with US President Barack Obama in Bali is near-perfect in timing:
  • India successfully test-firing Agni-IV missile that has a reach over large areas of the Chinese hinterland;
  • Australia’s change of heart about selling uranium to India; and,
  • Delhi announcing the rules for the implementation of India’s nuclear liability law.
  Each of the (…)

• Narendra Modi adds a New Lesson to the Fundamentalists’ History

  27 November 2011

  by ANAND MUTTUNGAL
  The constitutional experts say that the Chief Minister who rules the State on behalf of the Governor before going for a fast in any nature will have to seek the permission from the Governor; if the Governor refuses permission then he /she has to resign to take up fasting. It is not clear whether the Chief Minister has obtained permission. Whatever may be the constitutional position, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi began his fast with the words: “May God give me (…)

• Asserting the Rule of Law

  21 November 2011, by SC

  Last week a special riots court in Gujarat created history by sentencing the maximum number of people to life imprisonment in a single case. The court adjudicating the 2002 riots cases convicted 31 persons, mostly landed Patels, for the carnage at Sardarpura village in north Gujarat on March 1, 2002 that resulted in the killing of 33 people; and subsequently sentenced them to life imprisonment. At the same time 42 of the 73 accused were acquitted by the judge. It was indeed a gruesome (…)

• Would Rahul Effect Kill Manmohanomics?

  21 November 2011, by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

  There are people, may be millions, who believe feeding the hungry is less important for our governments than spending money for ‘develop-ment’. This attitude may be described as a reflection of insensitive minds, but many of our politicians brazen it out when push comes to shove.
  Sharad Pawar did it when, on the question of providing highly subsidised food to the needy, he said: “The BPL debate is underway and the final decision will be taken by the Planning Commission. According to me, (…)

• Remembering Jawaharlal Nehru

  21 November 2011, by P R Dubhashi

  On November 14, 2011, the nation observed the 122nd birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, a great patriot who was at the forefront of the national struggle for independence and who as the first Prime Minister of free India for the initial seventeen years after independence became the builder of modern India.
  Aftermath of Partition
  EVEN before the attainment of independence, Nehru headed the Interim Government and had to grapple with the horrible. aftermath of partition, communal riots, (…)

• Pandit Nehru and his View of History

  21 November 2011

  by VIVEK KUMAR SRIVASTAVA
  Pandit Nehru not only created history but also studied it in the analytical-comprehensive mode. His intellectualism had much to owe to his study of history. He viewed history as a tool to understand the secrets of human civilisation and its growth. He developed this tool as a basic platform which could yield answers to many of the unanswered questions of human existence. He studied history in a wider context. “He believed in the study of history as an effective (…)

• Indira Gandhi and Third World

  21 November 2011, by C Raghavan

  (On November 19, falls Indira Gandhi’s ninetyfourth birth anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce the following article by a veteran journalist based in Geneva. He was the Chief of the Geneva Bureau of the Inter press Third World News Service. This article appeared in Mainstream (November 17, 1984) less than a month after our third PM’s tragic assassination.)
  Indira Gandhi died as she lived—courageous and fighting.
  However she is judged at home on her domestic record, in the Third (…)

• South Block: Time for Reorientation

  21 November 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Whatever explanation may be trotted out by the External Affairs Ministry, there is no escape from the fact that the country has suffered a humiliating defeat in the race for a non-permanent member seat in the UN Security Council.
  There will be pundits who will ascribe the poor Indian score to our refusal to sign the CTBT which the government rightly decided for the country. This school of thought seems to argue that had India voted for the CTBT, the US would have (…)

• Reviving Universal PDS: A Step Towards Food Security

  21 November 2011, by Suranjita Ray

  An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of adequate nutrition are in India. It (…)

• An Open Letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal

  21 November 2011

  To
  The Chief Minister
  Government of West Bengal
  Kolkata
  Madam,
  Last week some of us who signed here sent an open appeal to you requesting you to personally initiate the process of opening a dialogue with the Maoists as that, in our opinion, was the only way out to resolve differences with those who are the sons and daughters of our soil, and not our enemies. We also emphasised that the issue was not at all a law-and-order problem, but rooted in socio-economic deprivation and hence (…)