Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Historic Delhi High Court Judgement flows from Nehruvian Vision of ‘Equality’

  11 July 2009, by Shohini Ghosh

  In a historic judgement, a two-judge Delhi High Court Bench comprising Chief Justice A.P. Shah and Justice Murlidharan has on July 2 decriminalised non-heterosexual sex between consenting adults. In an eloquently argued judgement of 150 pages, the Bench has struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a colonial legislation drafted by Lord Macaulay in 1860, that criminalised “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” punishable by imprisonment extending up to ten years. (…)

• Diagnosis of Left‘s Debacle Still Undetected

  11 July 2009, by Sharad Patil

  A spate of articles are appearing in periodicals on the debacle of the Left in the recent parliamentary elections. They are descriptive and do not go into the correct cause. The CPM leaders attribute it to the futility of the Third Front and to the blunder of withdrawing from the UPA on the issue of the atomic agreement.
  The Economic Conjecture
  Kripa Shankar comes closest to the correct diagnosis in his paper in Mainstream (June 12-18, 2009). To quote him:
  The Congress had enacted (…)

• CPI-M and Politics of Governance

  11 July 2009, by Arup Kumar Sen

  In a seminal lecture (2005), the eminent political theorist, Partha Chatterjee, argued that upto the end of the 1970s ideology played an important role in Indian politics. The popularity of a political leader depended on the sacrifices she/he made. But, a new paradigm has emerged in Indian politics in the last three decades. The present-day political leaders seem to be self-centred, opportunist, greedy and consumerist persons. Ordinary people are forced to negotiate with such local leaders (…)

• CPI-M’s Downhill Journey in Bengal

  11 July 2009, by Barun Das Gupta

  First the panchayat elections last year, then the Lok Sabha elections this May, and now the municipal polls. The CPI-M’s downhill journey to defeat, disgrace, despair and eventual dislodgement from power continues. One need not be an astrologer or a psephologist to predict that the curtains on the party’s 34 years of uninterrupted rule in West Bengal will be finally rung down in the State Assembly elections in 2011.
  The civic election results are significant because they reflect the (…)

• Lalgarh: Intellectuals, Maoists and the State

  11 July 2009, by Ambrose Pinto

  Intellectuals concerned with issues of people have been under attack in recent years in different states. The Karnataka Government had prepared a list of teachers of colleges, editors of newspapers and some NGOs alleging them to be close to the Naxals in the State because of their involvement in the anti-communal struggle. A group of them including Girish Karnad, Professor Govind Rao, Dr Sridhar and a host others were arrested in 2003 when they had gone to participate in a rally in support (…)

• Bharatiya Janata Party: Searching a New Subterfuge?

  11 July 2009, by Badri Raina

  I
  Wasn’t there a playwright who penned Six Characters in Search of an Author?
  Well, India has a “major” political party that seems forever in search of a programme.
  It is called the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
  But, hang on; unlike the famous play cited above, the BJP’s interminable project is, in fact, not to find the author/programme but to constantly hide the one and only it has.
  That author of its unreal being is the RSS, the so-called cultural organisation (…)

• Appeal and Open Letter to the Prime Minister

  11 July 2009, by Bharat Dogra, Reshma Bharti

  Respected Prime Minister,
  As Ganga and her numerous tributaries originate in the Uttarakhand Himalayas, this can rightly be called the maternal home of Ganga. We are two journalists who travelled in this region extensively for two weeks in June and were shocked to see the alarming extent to which the Ganga and its numerous tributaries/sub-tributaries are being ravaged and threatened by the indiscriminate, hasty, ill-planned, ruthless and in several cases illegal execution of hydel (…)

• On Death Row

  11 July 2009, by Mehtab Ali Shah

  Mehtab Ali Shah, who teaches in Sindh University, Karachi, has sent us the following piece that appeared recently as a Letter to the Editor in Dawn, the well-known Pakistani daily. We are reproducing it for the benefit of our readers who should know that the strength of the friends of India among democrats in our neighbouring country is not inconsequential.
  This refers to your editorial on June 26 in which you have rightly and passionately pleaded to the President to grant clemency to (…)

• A Creeping Paralysis

  11 July 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  What has happened to this great country where men and women fought with bare hands to shake off the shackles of a mighty imperial power? The decisive weapon in the nation’s struggle for freedom was the massive strength of its awakened millions set in motion by leaders who could bestir them to go out and meet the adversary. Where has that ultimate weapon been lost?
  Today when the very unity of the nation is threatened, a creeping paralysis seems to have gripped those who are expected (…)

• Micro Credit—The Hidden Agenda

  11 July 2009, by Nirmalya Biswas

  It was when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006, that ‘Micro Credit’ hit the headlines of the media. Poverty alleviation became the buzzword. A wave of euphoria for micro credit swept the public mind. Micro Credit resembled the magical Aladin Lamp! It seemed, the darkness of poverty would disappear as soon as the lamp was lit. The Christian supremo, Pope Benedict XVI, sent a message to a conference at the Vatican blessing the micro-credit programme for promoting “a culture (…)