Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• ‘West is West’: New American Protectionism and the Indian IT Sector

  10 November 2010, by K M Seethi

  Globalisation is often understood as a process that is identical with liberalisation or the opening up of the local and national borders to the global market. But the process as it has been underway is much more complex than this simple or mechanical linkage between globalisation and ‘open door’. Even as there has been very significant liberalisation in recent years, this has been paralleled by the continuation or even the intensification of protectionism in some countries, including the (…)

• Dealing with United States

  10 November 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  A strange situation of apparently contra-dictory facets mark the present phase of India’s relationship with the United States of America.
  Of late, there is a surfeit of talks about “shared values” ranging from commitment to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. To this has been added in recent months, the government’s new economic policy which plays up private enterprise and underplays public sector—at least that’s how it has been taken in the USA. And (…)

• An Open Letter to President Obama

  10 November 2010

  Dear Mr President,
  I hope you are doing great. I am delighted to hear that you are coming to India. The last time I saw you at the OSU rally in Ohio battling out against a belligerent Ms Clinton. I have moved back to India since. I witnessed jubilation back home among the Indians in general and the downtrodden in particular seeing the highest office of the most powerful country gained by someone lowest in the social strata—a victory of sorts for the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King (…)

• Tribute to S.R. Sankaran

  10 November 2010

  [The following e-mail from S.P. Shukla was read out at a meeting held at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi on October 18, 2010 to offer homage to the memory of S.R. Shankaran. The e-mail was sent to Prof Manoranjan Mohanty in response to the latter’s mail to him giving the sad news of Sankaran’s demise.]
  by S.P. SHUKLA
  It is hard to recomcile with the fact that S.R. is no more. I came to know of his sudden demise only through this mail. We grew together in the IAS. Right from (…)

• S.R. Sankaran: A Path-breaking Civil Servant

  10 November 2010, by K S Subramanian

  S.R. Sankaran (SRS hereafter), the unosten-tatious but remarkable civil servant who passed away recently, was known for his many qualities of head and heart. His simplicity, modesty and commitment to the rural poor was rivalled only by that of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty, the former Chief Minister of Tripura, with whom he had worked as the Chief Secretary. Whether he was posted in Tripura, Andhra Pradesh or the Government of India, SRS was singleminded in his devotion to the welfare of the (…)

• Prasar Bharati Must Perform

  10 November 2010, by Bharat Jhunjhunwala

  The government has decided that Door-darshan and Akashvani will be provided limited financial assistance in future. These services are run by their parent organisation, Prasar Bharati. Presently the deficit in current expenditures is wholly met by the government through budgetary support. It is now decided that only one-half of the current expenditures will be met by the government. Prasar Bharati will have to raise one-half through advertisements. The property being used by the organisation (…)

• Rethinking Poverty: The Disputed Dividing Line

  10 November 2010, by Suranjita Ray

  The co-existence of widespread poverty with high economic growth during the last few years has concerned both policy-makers and academics to get back to what constitutes poverty and where to draw the line below which poverty can be estimated. The concept of poverty line or garibi rekha was introduced by the Planning Commission in the 1960s to identify the poor. It is based on the monetary value required to meet basic needs and is thus revised over the years.1 However, the dividing line is a (…)

• An Open Letter to Ten Per Cent India, Myself Included

  10 November 2010, by Badri Raina

  I
  The Commonwealth Games (CWG) are over. Our revels have ended for now. Many White people have gone satisfied; some even impressed. What might have been a bland and colourless event elsewhere was rendered magical as the hooded cobras put in an appearance to greet the visitors. In which other country would you have pressed Langurs into service to shoo off mere monkeys? You might say that the abiding world of Kipling rendered what might have been the anasthetised efficiency of gadgetry a (…)

• Future belongs to ‘Bolshevism’

  10 November 2010

  [(October Revolution: Ninetythird Anniversary
  Seventh November this year will be observed as the ninetythird anniversary of the historic October Revolution. Although the socio-economic system in Russia has been overturned and the once mighty USSR dismantled, the worldwide significance of the Russian Revolution of 1917 has not waned in the least; on the contrary its importance has been heightened in the light of the latest international events that bring out the sole surviving superpower’s (…)

• Evil as Spectator Sport

  10 November 2010, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  One Chief Minister, four days, two confidence votes. That certainly puts Karnataka in the history books. But the twin victories are more Pyrrhic than the one Pyrrhus won against the Romans at unsustainably high cost. They have merely proved John Kenneth Galbraith’s theory that television has turned politics into a spectator sport. Honourable Members assaulting security marshals and one honourable Member doing an honourable striptease standing on an honourable desk must have (…)