Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Abuses of Biotechnology posing Threats to Survival

  22 February 2010, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  The following is the lucidest possible exposition of transgenic genetic engineering. There has been no other exposition anywhere with comparable lucidity of this intricate subject. Since this kind of engineering poses a threat to life’s survival on earth, it has become a crucial political issue. This article was published in Mainstream Annual 2001 (dated December 22, 2001). It is being reproduced here, with minor alternations
  by the author, in view of the latest controversy surrounding (…)

• 3 Idiots versus ‘Two Idiots’

  22 February 2010, by Braham Dutt

  The recent developments in Maharashtra are against the very spirit of our Constitution and unhealthy for the future of democracy in India. Both the senior and junior (Raj) Thackerays are competing with each other for their political survival and indulging in poisonous politics by playing regional, linguistic and religious cards, putting the unity and integrity of the nation in danger.
  Some time ago we saw North Indians being beaten black and blue by the Shiv Sainiks/MNS activists in (…)

• Bt Brinjal is Neither the Beginning Nor the End

  22 February 2010, by K Saradamoni

  A few days back, on January 26, 2010, we celebrated our sixtieth Republic Day, reminding us that we declared ourselves to be a sovereign Republic sixty years ago. We proclaimed that all people, living in this country, irrespective of religion, caste, gender, place of living would have freedom of opportunity. We told ourselves that ours would be a democratic country where freedom of faith or absence of it, right to live with dignity, to be treated as equal everywhere —place of worship, (…)

• Next Step in Land Reforms in the Context of UP

  22 February 2010, by Kripa Shankar

  The UP Zamindari Abolition Committee Report, which is supposed to be the most radical among such reports of other States where zamindari was abolished, was wholly opposed to any land redistribution despite the fact which it had noted that less than two per cent of the zamindars in UP owned nearly 58 per cent of the land. It had found that top 9000 zamindars owned above 100 acres of land each and that their Sir and Khudkast land alone constituted one-fourth of the agricultural land. Still the (…)

• Right to Food: Some Issues and Challenges: A Case Study of Kalahandi

  22 February 2010, by Suranjita Ray

  ”It is our ardent desire that not even a single citizen of India should ever go hungry …. It is also our national resolve to root out malnutrition from our country,” said the Prime Minister in his speech on August 15, 2009. This reinforces the pro-poor mandate of the government based on expansion and deepening of the inclusive growth and programme the most dramatic promise made is the proposal to enact a National Food Security Act, which promises every family below poverty line (BPL) in (…)

• Supreme Court of India or Supreme Court for Indians

  22 February 2010, by V R Krishna Iyer

  These two versions are radically different in principle and content. The Preamble of our current Constitution has inscribed its conscience that it pledges the people of India to Justice—Social, Economic, Cultural and Political India with a geo-political concept. Indians are humanist—a socio-economic idea, a collective value, emphatically, a crore or more of Indian humanity with a cultural legacy. A finer noble thought than a mere span of space, a terrain or land politically united by a (…)

• Danger Signal from Bombay

  22 February 2010, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  The time has come when we have to seriously ask ourselves if we are really serious about preserving in one piece this Republic of India. Many in our country think that to talk about disintegration of the Indian Union is just a fantasy with an overdose of panic. They can’t take it that we may have taken the road to Bosnia.
  Three months ago, this impression was widespread. It can’t happen here—was the average Indian reaction when the mighty USSR fell apart without a whimper, and when (…)

• Inside Khadi, Khaki and Gabardine

  22 February 2010, by N A Karim

  A New Class of Politicians with their White Khadi Jibbas, Police Officers with their Well-starched Uniforms and Bureaucrats in their Neatly Tailored Gabardine Shutcoats together cheerfully Patronise Crime and Corruption in Modern India
  Now all, including the political class, are up in arms against the retired Haryana Director General of Police, S.P.S. Rathore, for the crimes he committed nineteen years ago. He could not have gone scot-free then for the rape of a 14-year-old promising (…)

• India’s Flawed Afghan Policy

  22 February 2010, by M K Bhadrakumar

  ([rouge]Afghan Peace Prospects after London Conferencerouge]
  [rouge]The following are two distinct viewpoints among the Indian strategic and foreign policy analysts on the peace prospects in Afghanistan following the London Conference, articulated of late in two different newspapers by two well-known experts on the subject. These are being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers. —Editorrouge])
  On January 28 the region took a ride in the raft of optimism to (…)

• Obama’s Short-sighted Afghan Strategy

  22 February 2010, by Brahma Chellaney

  What US President Barack Obama’s adminis-tration has been pursuing in Afghanistan for the past one year has now received international imprimatur, thanks to the well-scripted London Conference. Four words sum up that strategy: surge, bribe and run. Obama has designed his twin troop surges not to militarily rout the Afghan Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Without a deal with Taliban commanders, the US cannot execute the ‘run’ part.
  The (…)