Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Spectacular Music, Spectacular Wreck

  11 July 2009, by T J S George

  Death, we know, is a great leveller. What we do not realise is that it is also a great revealer. It strips off the many masks we wear in life and reveals the many truths we hope to hide. How glittering were the masks Michael Jackson sported! And how ugly the truths behind them!
  The fans of course are uninterested in the ugliness. They remain dazzled by the magic of the Pop Emperor’s music. It was indeed superior music. It may have lacked the intellectual vigour of the Beatles, but it (…)

• Contours of the National Scene

  7 July 2009, by SC

  On the eve of Parliament’s Budget session the Union Cabinet decided to enhance the price of petrol by Rs 4 per litre and that of diesel by Rs 2 per litre while keeping the prices of cooking gas and kerosene unchanged. The decision, implemented from the midnight of July 1-2, was in response to the increase in the global price of crude oil. Officials, however, are of the view that state-owned oil companies would continue to suffer losses even after this hike. Hence there is every possibility (…)

• Time to say: BJP-CPM Bhai-bhai!

  7 July 2009, by T J S George

  It’s incredible but true. In their hour of defeat sworn enemies, the BJP and CPM, act like identical twins. Both make much noise about introspection and analysis. Yet both refuse to face the facts that stare them in the face. They play with self-serving justifications which fool no one but themselves.
  The overwhelming difference between this election and every previous election is the change in the character of the electorate. Times have changed and people have changed for a variety (…)

• GM Crops are the Highway to Genetic Holocaust

  7 July 2009, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

  According to a report in The Hindu of April 13 last, the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice issued three welcome directives to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee while giving a verdict on a PIL petition filed by the Convenor of Gene Campaign, Ms Suman Sahai, an internationally famous Indian geneticist. The directives to the GEAC are that it must (i) consider the toxicity and allergencity of the proposed GM crop; (ii) study the requirement of isolation distance of the (…)

• Economic Agenda: Global Crisis Calls for Fresh Thinking

  7 July 2009, by Arun Kumar

  The Congress as the dominant partner of the UPA is back in saddle in New Delhi. It is being argued that there is a mandate for the new government to carry out some of what it wanted to do in its previous term but could not—privatisation or labour or insurance reforms. Has the public endorsed the UPA’s dominant economic agenda? Economic issues hardly came up in the election campaign because the Opposition lacked clarity on their importance.
  The only economic issue that stirred the pot (…)

• Preliminary Statement on the Movement in Lalgarh

  7 July 2009

  A nine-member fact finding team comprising students from New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and journalists recently visited Lalgarh, to probe into the reality of the ongoing movement of the people in the area. Here is a preliminary account of our observations. We would like to appeal to your publication to highlight certain issues of the movement which have so far been overlooked and neglected by the media.
  We heard through various media and other sources that massive (…)

• Iran: Rafsanjani’s Gambit Backfires

  7 July 2009, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Iranian politics is never easy to decode. The maelstrom around the June 12 presidential election intrigued most avid cryptographers scanning Iranian codes. So many false trails appeared that it became difficult to decipher who the real contenders were and what the political stakes were.
  In the event, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei won a resounding victory. The grey cardinal of Iranian politics, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has been dealt a crushing defeat. Is the curtain finally (…)

• Indians Down Under

  7 July 2009, by Badri Raina

  The Kangaroos have been behaving badly. Hopping mad, you might say.
  This time not on the cricket field, but on the streets, and inside Indian homes and hostel rooms down under.
  A number of Indian students studying at Aussie universities have been at the receiving end of hate-violence from young, vigilante gangs—all white and anglo-saxon.
  They scream “you Indians, go home” and suchlike.
  All very nastily racist, but racism strangely not directed at other than (…)

• Marxism in India: Need for Total Rectification

  7 July 2009, by Bipan Chandra

  [gris]The following article was published in Seminar in June 1974. In view of its relevance at this juncture it is being reproduced with due acknowledgement and the permission of the author, the distinguished historian and Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.gris]
  Marxism has been an active political and intellectual force in India for over 50 years now. One need not therefore apologise for an attempt to evaluate critically the record of the activities of the Indian (…)

• China : Who’s Counter-revolutionary?

  7 July 2009, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Sometime ago, I was attending an interesting discussion on the subject of a national alternative. The discussion concentrated largely on the basic approach to the malaise of the present order, and was bereft of the excitement of a Rajiv-versus-V.P. Singh debate. Many distinguished scholars, political and social scientists participated and so did some political leaders.
  One of the party leaders began his peroration with: ‘I am not an intellectual, I am a political activist.” Looking (…)