Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Politics of Identity and Gandhi

  5 October 2011, by Upasana Pandey

  It is the irony of the day that most of the thinkers are assuming that change in the system will automatically bring about change in the individual. But we have witnessed that the more we are laying stress on having good governance and a democratic system, the more corrupt, unconscious and undemocratic individuals we are producing. Opposing this, Gandhi said it is not the system which will bring about change but it is the conscious and self-realised individual who will ensure all change. (…)

• Credibility of Leadership

  5 October 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  From the celebration of the Gandhi Jayanti to the commissioning of Bokaro, the largest steel plant in the country—we are reminded of the miles we have covered as also of the promises yet to keep.
  The Gandhi Jayanti has become a mere annual ritual. If it were to be celebrated in real earnest, it should have been the occasion to set the millions into motion for building the edifice of a new, prosperous India as he did in welding them into a fearless army that could (…)

• The Unforeseen Catalyst for Change

  5 October 2011, by Uttam Sen

  There are many conflicting versions of Anna Hazare and his movement that will endure. But not the least, the vision of exotic steamrolling that emerged out of Arundhuti Roy’s conver-sation with CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghosh. Whether true or untrue, real or fanciful, the agenda of a social network-media-spearheaded urban revolution clearing the decks for the penetration of foreign capital was intimidating (somewhat obliquely conveyed by the reference to the World Bank programmes in Africa where it (…)

• Anna Hazare in Historical Perspective

  5 October 2011

  by N.V.K. MURTHY
  Anna Hazare’s movement and hunger strike to have the Lokpal Bill tabled before Parliament created a stir in the whole country. Thousands upon thousands of people, men and women, young and old, joined the movement all over the country. Memories of the freedom movement under Gandhiji’s leadership were evoked. Anna Hazare was hailed as another Gandhi come to life. It will be instructive to view Anna Hazare’s movement in the historical perspective.
  It is not as if the (…)

• Understanding Corruption in India

  5 October 2011

  by SUDHANSHU TRIPATHI
  If virtue and vice both are integral parts of human nature and both exist together, the society consisting of such human beings will certainly reflect the essentials of such nature. Evidently goodness is as natural to society as there is wickedness. That is why corruption in its various forms, being the by-product of wicked-ness, has been in existence since times immemorial. Of course, it was less or very less in earlier times because there was less or very less (…)

• Letter to Nandan Nilekani

  5 October 2011, by S G Vombatkere

  I have sent you (by e-mail to nandan.nilekani @nic.in) an article on the system considerations and security risks of the UID Aadhaar project, requesting your comments, but have not been fortunate enough to receive a response so far. I will keep hoping that you will do me the courtesy of at least an acknowledgement, if not a response. I am attaching the article again for your convenience.
  Further to my earlier communication, I note with alarm that Google has admitted to handing over user (…)

• Maldives: Women, Abortion and Politics

  5 October 2011

  by ANKITA SHREE
  High numbers of abortion cases, poor pre-and post-natal care facilities, and inadequate knowledge about contraceptives are malaises prevalent in South Asia, but the issue of abortion has become especially contentious in the Maldives. This is ever since the Adhaalath Party, a coalition partner of President Mohammad Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party, mooted for execution of women who have aborted their foetuses—a sin as per the prevailing Sharia law.
  Unlike Western (…)

• CPI-M: A Victim of ’Unreconstructed Stalinism’

  5 October 2011, by Sankar Ray

  An in-depth post-mortem of the disastrous performance of the CPI-M and Left Front under its leadership in West Bengal is to be left to historians and sociologists. Political ideologues cannot reveal the whole truth. But Kheya Bag in a nearly-12,000 word essay, ‘Red Bengal’s Rise and Fall’, in the latest issue of in the pro-Trotskyite New Left Review, edited by Tariq Ali, inferred that “unreconstructed Stalinism, rein-forced by native customs of veneration and paternalism; adherence to rigid (…)

• What About Breaching People’s Privilege?: Dirty Tricks Experts Blunder Again

  5 October 2011, by T J S George

  Can the Government of India’s dirty tricks department never get it right? It had committed serial blunders while handling the Anna Hazare phenomenon. The government had been embar-rassed all along the way. Finally after Parliament accepted Hazare’s main demands, there was a feeling that wisdom would prevail.
  But the plotters are at it again. As crudely as ever, they have initiated proceedings against the leading members of the Hazare team on one charge or another. Bhushan, Kejriwal and (…)

• Tragedy, Farce, New Revelations

  28 September 2011, by SC

  The massive earthquake that shook Sikkim and adjoining areas, including Nepal, Bhutan and other parts of north India (notably north Bengal), in the evening of Sunday (September 18) has taken a heavy toll. While the number of those killed in the quake (which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale with its epicentre near the Sikkimese town of Mangan, close to the Nepal-Sikkim border and 68 km northwest of Gangtok, the province’s capital; 20 minutes later two aftershocks—measuring 6.1 and 5.3 on the (…)