Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Jettison Jammu And Kashmir From India-Pakistan Imbroglio

  22 August 2010, by V R Krishna Iyer

  Well over three score and three years we two neighourly Republics have become indigent independent countries. India, that is, Bharat, a united Republic, would be a culturally powerful and resourceful nation. But while giving Freedom from the imperial Crown, a treacherous stratagem was practised. India was divided into Bharat and Pakistan ever to be on belligerent terms with communal hatred. And as disastrous history would have it, J&K, a Muslim majority State, has its resources wasted on (…)

• Promises to Keep

  22 August 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
  Fifteenth of Agust is a sacred day in the annals of our nation as the day that marked the dawn of freedom from colonial bondage. And it is also the day of promises to keep. This country won its political independence not without a commitment, and that commitment was to emancipate its millions from the grinding poverty imposed by the social and economic structure built under colonial rule.
  This is the pledge that successive generations of the nation’s leadership (…)

• Poverty Tourism: A New Growth Industry or Pilgrimage for Power!

  22 August 2010, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  By now it is clear that the real-life experience has removed the ground from under the feet of neo-liberalism. On the one hand the whole world is witness to the fiasco of neo-liberalism at the global level. The stock markets and the corporate bottom-lines are heading towards the same old pre-recession levels while the masses are languishing. Based on massive public money based bailout packages of the financial sector (a process of socialisation of the losses of speculative capital grown too (…)

• Bhopal, Plachimada, Worth of an Ordinary Citizen and Development

  22 August 2010, by K Saradamoni

  I was watching a ‘reality show’, titled Citizen Journalist, in a Malayalam TV channel. The participant, a young man, reported on a colony of adivasis. Supported by effective visuals he showed the deprivation in the area and the utter despair in the life of the people. Strangely the local MLA had no knowledge of the area. The people, though poor in every respect, knew that they were remembered only at the time of elections. They know nothing of their rights. Two of the judges of the show (…)

• A Note on the Current Political Situation

  22 August 2010, by Randhir Singh

  By way of explanation the author, one of the most successful teachers in the University of Delhi as a Professor of Political Theory (now retired), writes:
  “The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my (…)

• Statement Released by Women and Mothers on Killings in Kashmir Valley

  22 August 2010

  The Mothers of India on August 6, 2010 released the following statement on the killings in Kashmir.
  There is a sound in Kashmir that resonates longer than the staccato of the gun. There is a sound in Kashmir that wants the violence to stop. There is a sound in Kashmir that doesn’t care about politics. There is a sound in Kashmir echoing: STOP, Enough! It is the sound of mothers crying as they wait for their children to return knowing that they may not. Wailing, as they wonder why their (…)

• Kashmir: The Anger and the Mess

  22 August 2010, by Humra Quraishi

  What are we doing in Kashmir? What are we doing to Kashmir? What are we doing to the Kashmiris? How many more civilians will be killed in Kashmir? How long will the boot control emotions and the rising anger? How long can this ongoing curfew be continued? How long can the Kashmiris sit in this besieged state when the month of fasting—Ramazan—starts next week onwards? How long will the hospitals be able to contain the long list of those lying injured? How many more fresh graves will have to (…)

• Tribute: Man with a Difference

  22 August 2010, by Ranbir Singh

  Although he had retired as an Assistant Director, Development, Haryana, the people of Kurukshetra knew him as the BDO, since he had served on this post there. He would never hesitate to take up cudgels with senior bureaucrats. This earned him adverse ACRs leading to his retirement at the age of fiftyfive instead of fiftyeight. He took pride in defying powerful political leaders but he had to pay for it by his ten transfers in five years. He was large hearted enough to withdraw his claim over (…)

• West Bengal Loses Confidence in CPI-M

  22 August 2010

  COMMUNICATION
  The inevitable has happened. The CPI-M has been roundly trounced in the recently held municipal elections in West Bengal. Whether the defeat is indicative of the results of the forthcoming Assembly elections may be debated, the ground reality is that the party has lost the confidence of the people of West Bengal. The rural population has moved away from the party because of the forcible acquisition of fertile lands in Nandigram an Singur. The urbanities are tired of the (…)

• The International Puzzle

  22 August 2010, by Surendra Mohan

  The ten thousand pages of the records of the secret documents of the USA which have been published in the media the world over have exposed the brutality of the 46 nations’ war upon a small, hapless country in their campaign named Security for Afghanistan. The large number of innocent lives lost owing to the attacks by the troops of the USA and Britain in ruthless bombings and the utter failure of these aggressors in breaking the Taliban’s will to fight have been effectively brought out by (…)