Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Exposing Unholy PoliticIan-Bureaucrat Nexus: Call to Reform Governance and Ensure Value-based Public Administration

  20 May 2017

  BOOK REVIEW
  by B.P. mathur
  On the Corridors of Power: The Theatre of the Absurd by Parimal Brahma; Patridge India; 2017; pp. 302
  Parimal Brahma is one of the rare breed of civil servants who have retained intellectual honesty and independent outlook and were not overwhelmed by the corrupting influence of power, while working in senior positions in the government. He had a ring-side view of the government, having worked in the Ministry of Defence, Civil Aviation, Environment and the (…)

• Revolutionary Violence and the State in India’s Democracy: A Study of Mass Encounter in Malkangiri

  20 May 2017

  by Kamalakanta Roul
  The following article was sent to us sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  It is being published now as its contents are still relevant.
  The globalising Indian economy has emerged as a brutal means of accumulating natural resources and also proved to be a sturdy thrust for displacement-related development. The creepy aspects of liberalisation and globalisation continue to exploit the unprocessed raw materials piled up in the tribal (…)

• Verdict after Six Months of Demonetisation

  14 May 2017, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  In the evening of November 8, 2016, the Government of India under Narendra Modi suddenly decided to embark on demonetisation. This was described by many, including in this column, as a “surgical strike on the Indian people”. By pulling out in one stroke high-denomination Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes—that constituted 86 per cent of the total currency in circulation—the government created a severe currency crisis. Writing in this column on December 1 last year one pointed out: (…)

• French Presidential Elections: Ultranationalism Rejected, Europe Heaves a Sigh of Relief

  14 May 2017

  by Purusottam Bhattacharya
  In a way the outcome of the French presidential elections is a vindication of the belief, held by many perceptive observers of Europe, that the prospects of Right-wing populist leaders and parties capturing power in that continent were grossly overrated. This was already proved in the Austrian and Dutch elections held last year and in March this year respectively when voters in those countries decisively rejected the far Right, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and (…)

• Where You Walk in Company . . .

  14 May 2017

  Rabindranath Tagore’s 156th birth anniversary was observed on Tuesday (May 9, 2017). We remember him and offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory on this occasion by reproducing the following poem, and publishing an article (on pages 27 to 35) in this issue. —Editor
  where you walk in company
  with the world of men,
  I am united with you.
  Not in the forest retreat,
  nor in isolation,
  not even in the solitude of
  my inmost thoughts,
  but where the people have you
  for their (…)

• Yogi Adityanath being simultaneously: UP CM and a Lok Sabha Member is Illegal

  14 May 2017, by Rajindar Sachar

  The mysterious rise of Yogi Adityanath as a centre of power contenders amongst the BJP/RSS leaders seems to baffle the public. It is a wrong assessment that he has been installed at the instance of Modi/Amit Shah. They are too politically astute not to create another power centre against themselves.
  Though Yogi was no doubt a Thakur (the Bollywood perpetual tormentor of the weak, and ruthless in accomplishing his aim) — he was a Mahant for a long time thus establishing easily his (…)

• Ultra-Nationalists on Anti-National Spree

  14 May 2017

  by M.M. Khajooria
  A section of self-styled ‘Hindutva’ zealots have decided the fate of Kashmir. They have dumped all Kashmiri Muslims in the lap of Pakistan and similarly branded the youth of the Valley as stone-pelters. Having made this determination they have decreed that Kashmiri students studying in educational institutions in the country must be made to pay for the sin of “humiliation and injuries inflicted on our brave Jawans” by the stone-pelters. After all, they were chips of the (…)

• Kashmir and Conscience

  14 May 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  In the brochures and posters of Indian tourism, Kashmir still figures with its enchanting attractions. In reality, however, the picturesque Valley of Kashmir is becoming out of bounds for the peace-loving citizens of this country.
  In a sense, Kashmir today represents the gravest challenge to Indian democracy—perhaps much more than what happened at Ayodhya on December 6 and all that followed. If the bomb blast in Bombay on March 12 and the blow-up of the bomb storage (…)

• India’s Kashmir Policy: Way Forward

  14 May 2017

  by Ram Puniyani
  The turmoil in Kashmir, which got intensified after the fake encounter of Burhan Wani (July 2016), does not seem to abet. It has been worsening as reflected in the ongoing violence leading to low turnout of voters in the by-poll (April 2017). Shockingly, there was a turnout only of 7.14 per cent of voters. The by-polls were also marred by violence in which many a civilian and security force person also died and lately one witnessed with great horror a Kashmiri youth being (…)

• War Poems

  14 May 2017

  May 9, 2017 marked the seventysecond anniversary of Victory over Fascism in the Second World War. On this occasion we carry poems by Russian poets who, like all other citizens of their country, actively participated in the struggle to rid the world of the fascist menace and bore the real brunt of that War.
  These times of ours are rather hard upon the pen. —Vladimir Mayakovsky
  You’ll hear the ring of metal in my voice. Direct and heavy into life I came. Not all will die, nor all be (…)