Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Two-Year Battle Fought From Prison: How Handcuffed Prisoners Defeated Biggest Imperial Power

  25 March 2017

  by Bharat Dogra and Jagmohan Singh
  The following article is being published to mark the eightysixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. They were executed in Lahore on March 23, 1931.
  Despite many adversities after their imprisonment, Bhagat Singh and his comrades by their courage and noble conduct were able to inspire and mobilise millions of people for greater participation in the freedom movement. This period of the imprisonment of Bhagat Singh and his (…)

• Moscow’s Step disturbs Kabul, New Delhi

  25 March 2017, by Apratim Mukarji

  The six-nation conference on Afghanistan’s security future held in Moscow on February 15 has brought about considerable disquiet in the two participating capitals, Kabul and New Delhi. Since the conference wason Afghanistan, Kabul would have been concerned in any way but the objectives, deliberations, and indications of further action have induced Afghanistan and India to be watchful about what the future may unfold. This reaction of two of the participants—and the former being the very (…)

• Pakistan in flap over Russia’s Afghan Moves

  25 March 2017, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Pakistan is finding itself between the rock and a hard place with the announcement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on March 10, 2017 that the Afghan National Security Advisor, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, was heading for Moscow for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on March 17. The Russian announcement said that the two officials will discuss “the security situation and prospects for promoting national reconciliation in Afgha-nistan, as well as ways to develop multilateral (…)

• Bonded Silence

  25 March 2017

  She is in her early playing teens,
  uprooted from the scenic setting
  of her village home nestling against
  a huge sheltering mango grove,
  then transplanted on the top floor
  of a big building of iron, concrete
  towering into the grey city sky.
  She has a job to do meticulously:
  ostensibly to look after a child.
  But there are also endless errands
  she virtually slogs to carry out
  from morning till late at night,
  moving like a household robot
  at the beck and call of (…)

• Return of Indira Gandhi

  25 March 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  In the backdrop of the BJP’s resounding success in the Assembly polls, and the elections in UP in particular, we are reproducing the editorial the founder of this journal wrote following Indira Gandhi’s spectacular return to power in January 1980 for the benefit of our readers.
  The ground-swell in the Lok Sabha election has been a phenomenon that nobody could even remotedly foresee. Not only the political commentators, including the present one, are made to eat (…)

• Women’s Rights in India: Miles to go

  25 March 2017

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  by Archna Katoch
  While celebrating the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2017, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The truth is that north and south, east and west [...] everywhere, we still have a male-dominated culture”, and emphasised the need to protect women’s rights as human rights and empower women and girls. (UN Daily News, 2017)
  It has been 69 years since India won its independence from British rule but even today, it can be found that (…)

• 

  Making Sense of the Poll Results

  19 March 2017

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The outcome of the elections to the five State Assemblies has confounded everyone—the victor and the vanquished alike. Exit polls indicated the BJP was ahead of others in UP, but the actual result—the BJP and its allies winning 324 out of 403 seats—took everyone by surprise. BJP President Amit Shah himself said the magnitude of the BJP victory in UP was ‘unexpected’. In Uttarakhand also the BJP won hands down. But the Congress victory in Punjab was comprehensive and (…)

• BJP Government in UP Doesn’t Bode Well for the Poor and Democracy

  19 March 2017, by Sandeep Pandey

  The shocking victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the North Indian State of Uttar Pradesh with over three-fourths of the seats in the Assembly elections appears too one-sided to be true. I had predicted a victory for Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). It remains a mystery that without a wave in their favour how the BJP almost swept the elections and Mayawati ended at the third spot behind the Samajwadi Party.
  Leader of the BJP Narendra Modi has given a slogan: ‘With (…)

• Modi Marches on amid Hope and Fear

  19 March 2017

  by L.K. Sharma
  A foreign correspondent who came to India to cover the State elections must stay on to report on this land of miracles. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being called the Magic Man after he won the largest State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) for his Hindu nationalist party, the BJP.
  The voters gave an overwhelming mandate to Modi who was not a candidate. He was elected to Parliament in the 2014 elections from UP’s world-famous temple town of Varanasi but he did not leave this (…)

• Pollsters’ Calculations Go Haywire

  19 March 2017

  by Shahira Naim
  The following report appeared in The Tribune (Chandigarh) on March 12, 2017. It is being reproduced with due acknowledgement.
  Lucknow, March 11: Ending a 14 year ‘vanvaas’ in Uttar Pradesh the BJP juggernaut has stormed the heartland on the ‘parivartan’ plank winning 325 seats with alliance partners virtually fulfilling the prophesy of a Samajwadi-BSP-Congress-mukt Uttar Pradesh—as together these parties mustered barely 74 seats.
  The BJP on its own won 312 seats and (…)