Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Human Rights—Rhetoric and Reality

  14 June 2010, by D.R. Chaudhry

  Human rights are those rights and freedoms by acquiring which one achieves one’s potential in various fields. Since the dawn of human civilisation, human beings have been striving for human rights. Undoubtedly, there has been a marked progress since the time of slavery when human beings were no better than chattel, yet a lot is yet to be achieved in this field.
  In pre-modern cultures, the concept of human rights did exist but it suffered from serious limitations. Aristotle, the Greek (…)

• Documents adopted at the People’s Convention on IDPs, Detainees and War Crimes in Sri Lanka, New Delhi, June 7, 2010

  14 June 2010

  DOCUMENTS
  (A daylong People’s Convention on IDPs, Detainees and War Crimes in Sri Lanka was held in New Delhi on June 7, 2010 just before Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s visit to India beginning June 8. It was jointly organised by several organisations and institutions. The Convention finalised a Letter to the PM (which was thereafter signed by the participants and sent to him), and adopted a Statement on the Sri Lankan Situation (alongwith a Roadmap for Dignified Resettlement, (…)

• India-Sri Lanka | Changing Political Relationship: Post-1990 Phase

  14 June 2010, by Gurnam Chand

  The immediate threat to any country arises in its neighbourhood. That is why the maintenance of peace, stability and friendship with neighbouring states is considered basic to a nation’s foreign policy. India’s relations with its neighbours therefore constitute a critical component of its foreign policy. The specific geo-strategic location of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean and ethnic affinity of the Indian Tamils with the Sri Lankan Tamils have been the most important factor in their (…)

• Danger Signal of Degeneration

  14 June 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  I write these lines after a fortnight has passed since that shocking incident took place in a suburb of the city of Calcutta. Three women and their driver returning from duty assigned by the government’s Health Department were detained by a gang of ruffians, their belongings looted, their van set on fire and they were beaten and the women criminally assaulted, in which one of them died alongwith the driver and two others are still hospitalised.
  This ghastly crime was committed in a (…)

• Scholarly Critique of Unipolar World Order

  14 June 2010, by Vijay Kumar

  BOOK REVIEW
  World Order: Vision and Reality by Hans Kochler, edited by David Armstrong; International Progress Organisation, Vienna; Indian print published by Manak Publications, Delhi; pages 530, price: Rs 2000.
  The book under review offers a serious, indeed searching, critique of the current world order shaped by the sole superpower and for this reason alone is bold and scholarly response to unipolar political order. The range and horizon of Prof Kochler are truly amazing. The book (…)

• Scrap All Dams and Hydropower Projects on Ganga

  14 June 2010

  Call from Srinagar (Garhwal) Seminar
  The following is a statement issued by participants at a seminar “Social and Environmental Impacts of Hydro Power Projects on Alaknanda and Mandakini Rivers”, HNB Garhwal (Central) University, Srinagar
  (Garhwal), Uttarakhand, April 24-25, 2010.
  We, the undersigned, who gathered in Srinagar (Uttarakhand) from different parts of India on April 24 and 25, 2010, join together with the people of Uttarakhand to assert with all the force at our (…)

• The Angst of Wayward US Partnerships

  14 June 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  As the crow flies, just over a kilometre separates the White House from Foggy Bottom, the home of the United States Department of State, but the travel distance is longer. At any rate, the drive President Barack Obama took last Wednesday (June 2) from the heart of Washington to the border with Virginia was a rare one.
  Obama broke protocol by attending a reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in honour of her visiting Indian counter-part, S. M. Krishna, who co-chaired (…)

• Afghanistan: Essential Tasks

  14 June 2010, by Mansoor Ali

  One basic aspect of the international approach to Afghanistan is the tendency to shape strategy, make decisions and operate on the ground in a way that the Afghans perceive as disrespectful and sometimes arrogant. What the Americans did in Vietnam they are doing almost the same in Afghanistan without regard to the self-respect, pride and dignity as well as culture of the Afghan people, and the counterproductive nature of the consequences of such behaviour does not bear elaboration. In fact (…)

• Afzal and the Right to Fair Trial

  10 June 2010, by Nandita Haksar

  The TV channels continue to invite me to debates on death penalty. The corporate media refuses to understand that the fight for Afzal has nothing to do with the debate on death penalty. That is a separate debate. In the case of Mohammad Afzal Guru, the man convicted of being a part of the conspiracy to attack the Indian Parliament in December of 2001, the central question is whether an Indian citizen can be hung without a fair trial.
  The arguments for and against the death penalty to (…)

• Triumph of Vox Populi

  10 June 2010, by SC

  The gruesome act of sabotage leading to the derailment of the Howrah-Kurla Jnaneshwari Express that resulted in the death of around 150 persons while injuring about 200 near West Bengal’s Jhargram last Saturday, May 29, 2010, the UPA Government in its second tenure under the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh dispensation releasing a 68-page Report to the People, 2009-10, outlining its record over the past one year and highlighting the obvious success stories of UPA-II, and the startling outcome of (…)