Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Silver Lining amid Ominous Forebodings

  8 April 2011, by SC

  As we go to press disturbing news has come from Washington: according to one report, highlighted by Russia Today or RT, one of the most independent foreign news channels in the world, US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorising the CIA to arm the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya; other reports quote senior American officials suggesting a fierce debate within the US Administration on this issue of supplying arms to the Libyan rebels with some apprehending that such a step (…)

• Behind The Arab Revolt Is A Word We Dare Not Speak

  8 April 2011

  by John Pilger
  This article, circulated by Countercurrents, reached us sometime ago but we could not use it earlier for unavoidable reasons. But we are publishing it now due to its abiding relevance.
  Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared the President’s daily intelligence brief. McGovern was at the apex of the “national security” monolith, that is, American power, and had retired with presidential (…)

• Justice Srikrishna Committee Report and Statehood for Telangana

  8 April 2011, by C.H. Hanumantha Rao

  No one from Telangana asked for the appointment of the Srikrishna Committee. The Centre perhaps wanted to buy time after there was severe opposition from the influential and vocal sections of Seemandhra to the announcement of its decision on December 9, 2009 to initiate the process of the formation of Telangana State.
  But once the Committee was constituted, there was widespread curiosity within the country and abroad to know the findings of an expert and impartial committee headed by a (…)

• BSP’s Route to 2012

  8 April 2011, by Shyam Singh

  The next State Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are scheduled in the summer of 2012. This article presents the prospects of the BSP in next State Assembly elections. After securing absolute majority in the UP State Assembly elections in 2007, and the successful inception of social engineering, the BSP adopted the Sarvajan policy as a guiding mantra of the present BSP Government. This policy speaks about the inclusion of all sections of the society into the framework of the government’s (…)

• Bangladesh: Before Accusing Sheikh Hasina Government Need for a Close Look at Yunus’ Grameen Bank

  8 April 2011, by Amitava Mukherjee

  It is difficult to predict what denouement the spat between the Sheikh Hasina-led Bangladesh Government and Mohammed Yunus, the Noble Laureate, would ultimately reach but it has undoubtedly brought to the fore many pitfalls of the micro-credit system which has so far been hailed as a panacea for poverty alleviation not just in the Third World countries but in many developed nations too. It may be a bit unfair to portrait Yunus as one who has only committed all kinds of wrongs but at the same (…)

• Taming the “Wild West” of Microfinance

  8 April 2011, by Kavaljit Singh

  The recent suicides by over 60 poor borrowers in the State of Andhra Pradesh have brought the operations of the microfinance institutions (MFIs) under public scrutiny. It is well documented by both print and electronic media that these debt-driven suicides were due to the coercive methods of loan recovery used by the commercial MFIs. The commercial MFIs operate as profit-making non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) in India.
  The majority of suicides took place in the Warangal (…)

• Retelling the Rajarhat Story

  8 April 2011, by Arup Kumar Sen

  The Land and Land Reforms Department of the Government of West Bengal first issued Section 4 (of the Land Acquisition Act 1894) in 1995 to acquire 21 moujas for the Left Front’s flagship project, the Rajarhat Satellite Township. Already, 2421 hectres of land have been acquired for the New Town project in Rajarhat and more that 1.6 lakh land-losers were awarded compen-sation. If we take into account the number of share-croppers, agricultural labourers and other people who derived their (…)

• On Dealing with Nuclear North Korea

  8 April 2011, by Ninan Koshy

  “I was stunned by the sight of 2000 centrifuges in two cascade halls and an ultramodern control room. But it was not until the long drive back to Pyongyang that the political implications of these findings hit me. It will be more important than ever to limit Pyongyang’s nuclear programme and calm tensions in the Korean peninsula.”
  —American Scientist Dr Siegfried S. Hecker in Foreign Affairs, December 2010, after visiting the new uranium enriching plant in North Korea
  North Korea was (…)

• Muslims’ Trauma in India Today

  8 April 2011, by Humra Quraishi

  I have before me this recently released volume titled—What It Means To Be A Muslim In India Today. Published by ANHAD, this report is based on two important meets—a national meet on the status of Muslims in contemporary India which was held in New Delhi in 2009; and a people’s tribunal on the atrocities committed against Muslims in the name of fighting terror, which was held in Hyderabad in 2008. And putting together those proceedings, findings, observations, actual facts and figures in the (…)

• Governance and the Armed Forces

  8 April 2011, by S G Vombatkere

  “Indian Army, Rape Us”
  The naked protest by women in Imphal, Manipur, on July 19, 2004, in front of the Assam Rifles Headquarters was in righteous protest against the custodial rape and murder of Thanjiam Manorama allegedly by Assam Rifles personnel. The protesting women held a banner that read, “INDIAN ARMY RAPE US” and “INDIAN ARMY TAKES OUR FLESH” [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0719-03.htm ; Accessed on 19.3.2011]. While crimes by Indian Army personnel should never be excused (…)