Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Afghanistan: ’Cronies and Warlords’ wait in the Wings

  24 November 2009, by M K Bhadrakumar

  For a fleeting hour or two, a question hung in the rapidly chilling autumn air in the Hindu Kush: did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speak last weekend at the behest of United States President Barack Obama or did he speak out of turn, as even experienced politicians are wont to? Then it went away. It really does not matter either way.
  The damage has been done. Brown’s speech on Afghanistan at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London on November 6 was appalling in its (…)

• Drought, Food Prices and the Poor in India

  24 November 2009, by Sitaram Kumbhar

  Chronic Drought and Temporary Relief
  The politics of drought and food is not a new phenomenon in India. The drought is likely to give rise to inflationary pressures on food prices. Nevertheless, there is a need to make an assessment of the looming hunger due to acute deficit of rainfall this year and its’ likely impact on the people who are/were on the edge of hunger. The impact of the drought could be severe due to multifarious reasons which this paper attempts to explicate.
  The (…)

• Beyond Populism

  24 November 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Two events marking the beginning of the long Budget session of Parliament fitted in neatly to highlight the realities of the present-day Indian politics.
  On Parliament’s opening day New Delhi witnessed a massive turn-out of people from all over the country, with of course the neighbouring States providing the largest quota: special trains by scores and buses, both State-owned and private, commandeered by those in authority, brought this huge concourse to the Capital, a sort of Delhi (…)

• Engaging Study of Ongoing Cultural Transformation

  24 November 2009, by Sita Ojha

  BOOK REVIEW
  The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture by Philip Slater; Sussex Academic Press, Portland, Oregon; 2009; pages 242.
  The author through this thought provoking book sincerely endeavours to help us understand the cultural metamorphosis taking place all over the world, to ease the discomfort of living in a time of transition, and to encourage adaptation to the change, which seems both inevitable and also necessary.
  Divided into three major parts—the way (…)

• Juridical Contours of the Right to Education

  24 November 2009, by Vijay Kumar

  The recently enacted Right to Education Act, 2009 has extensively been debated in the media, civil society and academic palaver. Mainstream also intervened in the debate, and to the best of my recollection, published two pieces: first, a rather elaborate one by Muchkund Dubey on September 19, 2009, and thereafter by N.A. Karim on October 3, 2009. While entirely endorsing the views expressed in these two articles and sharing the perceptions of the learned contributors, I would like to add (…)

• A Contemplative Testament

  24 November 2009, by Som Benegal

  Soon reaching my 88th birthday, I realise that it has been a long journey through life. No doubt it has had high moments of considerable achievements in various fields which seemed beyond credibility, but there were also low points of physical and mental pains sustained over many longer years than imaginable but met with fortitude and understanding.
  Now, at this moment, I realise that I have become a traveller with an uncertain tether in search of the lost horizon of an improbable (…)

• Nehru as PM and Foreign Minister

  24 November 2009, by K. Natwar Singh

  Fortyfive years after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, has history done him justice? Regrettably not. In surveys that rank India’s best Prime Minister, he is placed below his daughter, and on some occasions he figures third. This is preposterous. Only three worthwhile books on him have appeared after his death: Hiren Mukherjee’s The Gentle Colossus, S. Gopal’s three-volume biography and M.J. Akbar’s Nehru: The Making of India.
  Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundations of a democratic, secular, (…)

• Village Pradhans from Weaker Sections on the Reality of Panchayati Raj

  24 November 2009, by Bharat Dogra

  On the one hand, there is a growing demand for strengthening the panchayati raj system as there is a widespread realisation that genuine powers, functions and the resources to match them have not yet reached the panchayats. On the other hand, there is also a genuine concern that due to the present dominance of some big landowners-cum-contractors in several villages, the panchayats have been captured by them in several places and so they try to divert a lot of development resources for (…)

• New Social Movement in West Bengal

  24 November 2009, by Arup Kumar Sen

  We have witnessed a new kind of social movements in recent world history. People in civil society everywhere are moving to mobilise themselves through a myriad of social move-ments beyond or besides, and often instead of, political parties, the state, and revolution. The community-based social movements mobilise and organise their members in pursuit of material and non-material ends, which they often regard as unjustly denied to them by the state and its institutions, including political (…)

• Outrageous!

  17 November 2009, by SC

  The results of the by-elections for 31 seats in seven State Assemblies and one Lok Sabha constituency in UP are before us. The Congress has won all the three seats in Kerala, two in Assam, one in Chhattisgarh, and one each in West Bengal, UP, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan—in all 10, while its ally, the Trinamul Congress, has captured all the seven seats it contested in West Bengal. So the UPA’s tally is 17. Among the non-UPA parties Mayawati’s BSP ruling UP emerged the clear winner bagging (…)