Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Jyoti Basu’s Bombshell

  20 March 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  [From N.C.’s Writings
  Two months have passed since Jyoti Basu breathed his last in Kolkata on January 17, 2010. We once again remember the CPM patriarch by reproducing N.C.’s following article which appeared in Mainstream (January 18, 1997) bringing out the issues that were thrown up by Jyoti Basu’s press interview that was published on Janaury 1, 1997 and came as a bombshell within the CPM due to his open criticism of the party leadership for rejecting the idea of Basu becoming the (…)

• India’s Role in Afghanistan irks Pak

  20 March 2010, by Sushil Vakil

  The recent developments in the region give enough indications that Pakistan is desperate over the growing influence of India in Afghani-stan. After failing to garner international support on opening dialogue with the Taliban the country is now resorting to attack Indians working across the war-ravaged country through its ISI and Islamic fundamentalists—the Taliban and Al- Qaeda.
  There have been more than three attacks on Indians and Indian installations in Afghanistan during the last (…)

• Real Threat of Civil War

  20 March 2010, by Alka Tyagi

  BOOK REVIEW
  Making India Work by William Nanda Bissel; Penguin,Viking, New Delhi; 2009.
  William Nanda Bissell’s illustrious work, Making India Work, is the work of a diligent intellectual, a corporate head, a social thinker and, above all, a visionary.
  William Bissell is talking about the present socio-political situation, the poverty and environmental hazards that are threatening India. He invokes every Indian to wake up and work for an immediate change in the current (…)

• Surrogacy in India: A Thorny Issue

  20 March 2010, by Namita Singh Jamwal

  Surrogate motherhood—an arrangement in which a woman carries and bears a child for another person or persons, but takes no ownership of the child born—has raised moral, ethical, social and legal questions about both—the woman and the ‘commissioned baby’. The practice of renting a womb and getting a child is like outsourcing pregnancy. The business volume of this trade is estimated to be around $ 500 million and the numbers of cases of surrogacy are believed to be increasing at a galloping (…)

• Rajya Sabha Creates History

  19 March 2010, by SC

  For all the opposition from a vocal and recalcitrant minority within Parliament and certain sections of informed opinion outside, the passage of the Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill in the Rajya Sabha on March 9 by a landslide (186-1)—after the vociferous opponents seeking to hold the Upper House to ransom with their unprecedented actions (setting a record of sorts in unruly behaviour within the precincts of the Council of States) had been evicted and the BSP members also walked out—was (…)

• Wider Lessons of Shiv Sena’s Latest Mumbai Experience

  19 March 2010, by Balraj Puri

  The setback that the parochial form of Maharashtrian regionalism has recently received may result in revival of the progressive potentialities that regional nationalism had once displayed. Its experience is of wider relevance in other parts of the country also and needs a more thorough debate than has taken so far. First, let us recall what happened in Mumbai.
  The overwhelming response of the Mumbaikars to My Name Is Khan in defiance of the Shiv Sena’s call for the boycott of the (…)

• A Tribute to Dr K.N. Raj

  19 March 2010, by Lalit Uniyal

  I was never a student of Dr K.N. Raj; yet he was my teacher.
  This curious circumstance came about in the following manner. Driven by an irresistible urge to work for the poor, I resigned my job with the eventual aim of working in a village. But I felt an overwhelming need for deeper social understanding, and as one influenced by Marxism, economics was an indispensable tool for this purpose. But I had never studied economics at any stage. I was in the South (to avoid my unhappy (…)

• Tribute to K.N. Raj

  19 March 2010

  TRIBUTE
  [ Professor Kakkadan Nandanath Raj, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi, who founded the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram and was its Honorary Emeritus Fellow, breathed his last in Thiruvananthapuram on February 10. As a token of our tribute to his abiding memory, we reproduce here his contribution by way of an intervention at a discussion in Thiruvananthapuram (December 8, 1998)—it was carried in the Mainstream Annual Number 1998 (December (…)

• Suspend the Senior Officer involved in the Silda Fiasco

  19 March 2010, by D. Bandyopadhyay

  On February 15, 2010, around 5 pm in the late afternoon, a group of armed Maoists attacked the camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles at the Silda bazaar area. [Silda happens to be some 30 km from Midnapore town and 14 km from Jhargram in West Bengal.] They set fire to the camp and killed two-to-four riflemen while injuring a dozen others. No civilian was killed or injured by the firing. Then they decamped with 47 rifles and a large volume of ammunition.
  The Eastern Frontier Rifles is a (…)

• Towards Understanding Naxalism

  19 March 2010, by Sarabjit Kaur

  One major challenge before the Indian state today is that of Naxalism, a movement which has a long history and which over a period of time has expanded its influence and violent activities. It is now spread over 14 States covering about 160 districts. (Misra, 2008, p. 63) According to various sources, it is believed that more than 6000 people have been killed in Naxal violence in the last 20 years. This really becomes a matter of concern and hence provokes one to identify the factors which (…)