Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• PM’s Jibe in Parliament

  12 February 2017, by SC

  COMMENTARY
  One part of PM Narendra Modi’s speech in the Rajya Sabha during the debate on the motion on the President’s Address to Parliament has caused a veritable political earthquake even if he himself had ridiculed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s assertion that he (Rahul) was not allowed to speak in the Lok Sabha earlier because if he had spoken it would have resulted in an earthquake.
  What did the PM say? He targeted former PM Manmohan Singh saying: “It’s probably the only (…)

• Union Budget 2017-18: Inadequate Response in Times of Crisis

  12 February 2017, by Arun Kumar

  The Budget is an instrument of macroeconomic policy first and then anything else. If its aggregate figures are found wanting, its allocations and goals would also not be attained. In times of a shock to the economy, chances that the figures may be incorrect become greater. Assumptions underlying the preparation of the Budget have a high probability of being incorrect. The chances of this turning out to be true become greater if the government does not acknowledge the problem it may have (…)

• US-Russia Ties: As Trump moves in, Memory mixes with Desire in Moscow

  12 February 2017, by M K Bhadrakumar

  A close look at the inaugural speech by US President Donald Trump and the outline of the various key plans of his administration that has been published immediately afterward on the White House website on January 20 amply bears out the basis of the cautious assessment in Moscow in recent weeks that while a steady revival of Russian-American relationship is within the realms of possibility, difficulties will remain and there needn’t be any illusions about radical changes.
  For a start, (…)

• Trump and Modi hover over the Jaipur Literature Festival

  12 February 2017

  by L.K. Sharma
  The reports of America’s decline are exaggerated. The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) proved it. The POTUS—the President of the United States—matters. Donald Trump got mentioned in several sessions. It was yet another victory for Trump. Hovering as a spectre over a literary festival in a distant land is a great achievement, beyond the President of Mongolia and the Supreme Leader of North Korea.
  If Donald Trump did not tweet about the Jaipur Literature Festival, it was (…)

• Trump, Modi and a Shaft of Worrying Similarities

  12 February 2017, by Mani Shankar Aiyar

  Francis Fukuyama, the celebrated Japanese-American intellectual, who saw the end of the Cold War as the “End of History” but a “Clash of Civilisations” as the next stage, has explained the accession of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States as “the rise of an American strongman (being) actually a response to the earlier paralysis of the political system”.
  The thesis also applies perhaps to the rise of another outlier, Narendra Modi, to the top of the pole in India. While (…)

• Unimportance of Awards

  12 February 2017, by Kuldip Nayar

  When the distinguished writers and artists return to the Academies the awards which had been conferred on them, the question to ask is not why they did not do so earlier, say, at a testing time like the Emergency. Writers and artists are a sensitive lot. They react when they feel like and how they feel like.
  It is, in fact, the duty of the government to find out why they felt that the situation had come to such a pass that they had no alternative except to return their awards. Nayantara (…)

• Labour Issues in the Current Milieu: An Introspection

  12 February 2017

  by l. Mishra
  Let me begin with a historic introspection.
  “O mother! Why is it that I am black when everybody else around is white? The angels, the Tarzan, the little stars who twinkle are all white. The President’s residence is called ‘White House’. Why is this infatuation with white? Why is it that black represents evil while white represents all that is good and holy? Why should I join the American army to fight the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War (1958-73)? War entails a lot of bloodshed (…)

• Kalpana Dutt

  12 February 2017, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The following lines were written by N.C. twentytwo years ago and published in this journal’s February 18, 1995 issue. It is being reproduced on the occasion of the distinguished revolutionary Kalpana Dutt’s twentysecond death anniversary which fell on February 8 this year. It came and went with hardly anyone remembering her on that day. Kalpana’s birth centenary on July 27, 2013 also went virtually unnoticed. But we in Mainstream have decided to offer our homage to her (…)

• Xi Jinping’s China

  12 February 2017, by Dipak Malik

  After having some serious hiccups last year in its long march to a market economy with Chinese characteristics, the synod of the top Mandarin bosses has confabulated for resuscitating the second largest sagging economy of the world by mid-December in their annual stock-taking of the national economy. They call it ‘supply side’ reform thus not altogether rejecting the supply side economics in the style of Milton Friedman but introduce some serious tinkering into it. The reform is aimed at (…)

• Hatred Justifies All

  12 February 2017, by Mukul Dube

  A judge of the Bombay High Court recently gave bail to three men who were charged with a murder committed in the presence of eye-witnesses. Here is part of the judgment, which looks not at facts but at presumed motivation:
  “The fault of the deceased was only that he belonged to another religion. I consider this factor in favour of the applicants/accused. Moreover, the applicants/accused have no criminal record and it appears in the name of the religion, they were provoked and have (…)