Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Can the Left become the National Alternative?

  10 May 2010, by Chaturanan Mishra

  The country is heading towards a political vacuum in the sense that the two national level parties—the Congress and BJP—are weakening day by day. The Congress, a secular party, is no longer in a position to mobilise the masses to protect their rights, even the legal rights, and the bureaucracy has become so much anti-people and corrupt that even the funds sanctioned for the public do not reach them. Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister had said that only 16 paise out of one rupee reach the (…)

• Bright or Ugly?

  10 May 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  With his return from the Dhaka Summit, Rajiv Gandhi’s budget for foreign tours for the current year is exhausted, the most impressive that any Prime Minister of India has undertaken in the first year in office. The time for drawing up the balance-sheet for the year has not come, since the over-publicised stop-over in New Delhi by General Zia on December 16 is yet to be assessed.
  The Dhaka Summit which institutionalised South Asian Regional Cooperation by setting up its Association is (…)

• Potentialities of South Asian Identity

  10 May 2010, by Balraj Puri

  The potentialities of South Asian identity were unfolded in a three-day SAARC writers and literature conference which I attended recently in Delhi. It became fairly obvious that bilateral disputes, which have retarded the growth of the region, are cut to size when viewed in the context of the SAARC. Moreover, the South Asian identity can be better developed through non-official efforts than by formal government efforts.
  The delegates to the conference became conscious and emphasised (…)

• What is Violence? What is Non-Violence?

  10 May 2010, by Bharat Dogra

  Violence is committed not just when someone physically attacks another person or fires a gun. Violence is not just an action but a way of thinking. Violence is committed whenever someone plans to harm others or deprive others for self-gain. When big companies and politicians in collusion with them conspire to grab huge areas of land and destroy the livelihood of millions of villagers in the process, then these companies and politicians are certainly committing large-scale violence even (…)

• Peasants in India

  10 May 2010, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive incursion into the agrarian sector per se. The reason is the chimerical idea of (…)

• Tagore: An Introduction in the West

  10 May 2010, by Mithun Dey

  (May 9 this year marks Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s 149th birth anniversary—on that day will commence the yearlong celebrations to commemorate the poet’s 150th birth anniversary in 2011. On this occasion we are publishing the following articles to remember him and offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory.)
  Rabindranath Tagore’s name is synonymous with Bengali culture. His prolific outpouring of poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories and essays are golden threads woven into the (…)

• Two Events in Tagore’s Life

  10 May 2010, by A K Biswas

  Attending a Namasudra Conference, Banned from Entering Puri’s Jagannath Temple
  It may not be news to many that the entry of the Tagores of Calcutta was banned in the Jagannath temple of Puri. At least many might have heard in whispers but disbelieved and dismissed it as slanderous gossip. Or not much importance was attached to it by them. However, hardly anybody would have heard in wild gossips that Rabindranath Tagore attended a caste conference which, ipso facto, would cause revulsion (…)

• Impending Constitutional Crisis in Nepal

  10 May 2010, by Aparijita Kashyap, Satish Kumar

  The stage seems to be ready for a constitutional crisis in Nepal. The deadline for enacting the new Constitution is on May 28, 2010. The preparation for making the Constitution seems to be half done. Prachanda is strongly against the partial enactment of the Constitution. This will lead to the derailment of the constitutional process. It is a well-known fact that the people of Nepal have been tricked numerous times in the name of the Constitution. But earlier attempts were being made by (…)

• China’s Growing Influence in Nepal: Implications on Tibetan Refugees

  10 May 2010, by Kriti Singh

  There are more than 20,000 Tibetans residing in Nepal, living with no defined legal status as the Nepalese law does not recognise the rights of refugees under the principal treaties that govern their status under international law. Provided they have a Nepalese “refugee identity certificate” (RC), Tibetans who arrived before 1989 can remain in Nepal with certain limited rights. Most live in an uneasy state of subsistence, principally in a small number of isolated settlements in the Kathmandu (…)

• State of the IR Discipline in India: A Debate

  10 May 2010, by Seema Narain

  An informal round table was held at the Department of Political Science at Delhi-University to discuss ways of promoting the IR discipline in India. This discussion was a follow-up action of the workshop held on International Studies in India. at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore., March 25-26, 2009.1 This report needs to be published in order to share some of the concerns expressed at the roundtable and stir a debate on this very vital issue in (…)