Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  All-encompassing Economic History of Indian Peasantry

  26 December 2009, by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay

  BOOK REVIEW
  Peasant History of Late Pre-Colonial and Colonial India by Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri; Pearson Education, New Delhi; 2008; pp. xxv+939.
  It is always difficult to review a book by a teacher. Such a review always tends to become a tribute rather than a critical analysis of the content and arguments of the book. And I will not even try to pretend that I have been able to avoid that pitfall here, for I learnt my first lessons in the economic history of India from Professor Binay (…)

• Climate Change and Struggle for Self-determination

  26 December 2009, by Sunita Samal

  The following article was written before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit (December 7, 2009).
  Currently, ethnic and religious antagonism stand out as the most important forces shaping most of the world’s armed conflicts in the post-Cold War scenario. The United States’ civil war in 1860 is a good example of a secessionist civil war. The war in the Eritrea province of Ethiopia was internationally recognised in the 1980s. These are religious and racial conflicts which are not due to (…)

• Where is Hemant Karkare’s Bullet-proof Jacket?

  26 December 2009, by Subhash Gatade

  I
  Hemant Karkare’s family—his wife Kavita, his son and daughters and other near and dear ones—have slowly, albeit silently, come to terms with the fact that he is no more. Yes, there are occasions when his son takes out the laptop and scans the family album to see his father in various moods. There are a few photographs he really loves to watch again and again, where his dad looks a different person and not the usual policewallah.There are times when his mother also joins him and every (…)

• Judicial Activism and Investigative Journalism: Editors as PIL Litigants

  26 December 2009, by Prabhakar Kulkarni

  A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) can be filed in any High Court or directly in the Supreme Court. It is not necessary that the petitioner has suffered some injury of his own or has had personal grievance to litigate. The PIL is a right given to the socially conscious member or a public spirited NGO to espouse a public cause by seeking judicial means for redressal of public injury. Such injury may arise from breach of public duty or due to a violation of some provision of the Constitution. (…)

• Genetic Engineering: Instrument of Western Agribusiness to Control India’s Food and Farming System

  26 December 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  The recent high-pressure tactics to introduce genetically engineered food crops in India are another rude reminder that Western agribusiness companies have a deeprooted strategy to obtain a stranglehold on India’s food and agriculture system.
  In a review of recent trends titled ‘Food Without Choice’ (The Tribune, November 1) Prof Pushpa M. Bhargava (who was nominated by the Supreme Court in the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee to protect safety concerns), an internationally (…)

• In Utter Desperation

  12 December 2009, by SC

  Has the Centre finally given in to the demand of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) for a separate Telangana State? The answer appeared to be ‘yes’ late last night when the Union Home Minister announced, after a series of parleys among the central leaders on the issue, that the process of forming the separate State would be shortly initiated by the adoption of an appropriate resolution in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly. That announcement resulted in TRS President K. Chandrashekhar Rao giving (…)

• Azadi, Autonomy and Self-Rule vs Freedom

  12 December 2009, by Balraj Puri

  Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has offered to have a quiet dialogue with all parties in Kashmir including who are demanding Azadi, Autonomy and Self-Rule, the three main categories in which the politics of the Valley is divided. But none has spelled out the broad outlines of the constitutional system within the State which would ensure the rights of the people if they succeed in their objective.
  The votaries of restoration of the pre-1953 status for the State, for instance, when (…)

• Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership Enters New Stage

  12 December 2009, by Arun Mohanty

  India and Russia value their regular annual summits as the principal vehicle to advance their strategic partnership in different directions. The agenda of regular Indo-Russian summits always cover bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual concern. The just concluded Indo-Russian summit at Moscow in this regard was no exception, and has no doubt pushed our strategic partnership to a new stage and provided a qualitatively new content to our time-tested relationship.
  With (…)

• Obama treads Soviet Road out of Kabul

  12 December 2009, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The new Afghan strategy announced by United States President Barack Obama on December 1 is a game-changer in regional politics across a broad swathe of the international system. The reactions in capitals as far removed as Beijing, Tehran, New Delhi and Moscow amply bear this out.
  Broadly speaking, just about everyone under-stands that the US surge of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan is a passing necessity. It merely provides the gateway to an end-game strategy aimed at (…)

• This Business of English

  12 December 2009, by Ashok Celly

  “In India the cultural imperialism of English had a very decisive impact on my life as English language is a status symbol and a gateway of social mobility. It is hard for those who are born in a family which does not promote or speak English language and does not have means to send their children to English medium schools. In India intelligence of a person is considered synonymous to speaking English with an Oxford accent, which means, those who do not speak English with a desirable accent (…)