2017

COMMUNICATION
Many thanks to Mainstream and to Prof Arun Kumar for increasing our understanding of demonetisation-related issues with such clarity. Prof Arun Kumar is, on the one hand, an eminent economist and also a top expert on black money. On the other hand, he is also known for speaking with a lot of clarity on such complex and controversial issues. Hence Mainstream selected just the right expert for bringing greater clarity to this issue at a time when very conflicting news and views (…)

Currently, one of the worst post-World War II genocides is underway in India’s neighbour-hood. In the Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma), cleansing of people belonging to the Rohingya tribe (mostly Muslims and a few Hindus and Buddhists) has been going on for the last two decades. But this cleansing project of the Rohingyas is in full steam now by the Myanmar Army and foot-soldiers of the Fascist Buddhist organisations with the coming to power of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize recipient (…)

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is wrong when he says that all of India runs on dynasties. Ruling means wielding power at the Centre. Only Jawaharlal Nehru’s family has had the opportunity to do so. Nehru ruled for 17 years, his daughter Indira Gandhi for 18 years and Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi, for five years. Thus, the dynasty has been in power at the Centre for 40 years, more than half of the period since independence in August 1947.
Nehru saw to it that his daughter would (…)

The rhetoric says that the dream of dear Mother Narmada, of flowing from Madhya Pradesh into Gujarat and irrigating lakhs of hectares, has now been fulfilled with the raising of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to 136 metres and its opening. What a reflection of the distortion of history and the deprivation of the legitimate worshippers of Mother Narmada!
On either side of the great river Narmada, which flows downwards, are hills or, in other words, Narmada flows in a valley and on both sides there (…)

Prime Minister Modi chose to celebrate his birthday, September 17th, by inaugurating the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). There were several letters written to him, informing him in case he did not know, or reminding him in case he did know and had forgotten, that 40,000 project-affected families (PAFs)—farmers, artisans, fisherfolk, both Adivasis and Dalits of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra—remained to be rehabilitated for their homes, lands and livelihoods lost due to submergence of hundreds (…)

by Bhartendu Kumar Singh
Military power, along with economic power, constitute the great power edifice in contem-porary international relations. Yet, India’s attempts to consolidate its great power status is stymied by a sick and sterile military industrial complex (MIC). The helplessness was best reflected in a recent statement by a senior service official that even Pakistan’s MIC is much better than India’s!
True, India’s MIC is in state of atrophy. But Pakistan’s MIC is not the ‘right (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
by Garima Mani Tripathi
“Men define women not as ‘herself’ but relative to them,” wrote Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949). While Ms Nirmala Sitharaman’s appointment as the first (full-time) woman Defence Minister is a welcome step, the patriarchal perspective identified by Beauvoir still pervades Indian society where nationalism, defence, border etc. are all part of the grand masculine narrative of subjugation, dominance and power. No wonder, the ‘hegemonic (…)

Under the steadfast vigil
of the plestar,
all along the milky way,
I hear the steady tread of revolution
across the firmanent.
Millions are on their march.
Does it not raise
an answering echo in your heart?
Here, in the citadel of
inertia and stupidity, the somnolents lie prone
wielding their fly-whisks,
as they reminate over the past
and repeat their outworn cliches.
Sukanta Bhattacharya
[Translated from the original Bengali by Kshitis Roy]

EDITORIAL
The economic situation is worsening by the day. This is the naked truth which is staring us in the face. Lately the fuel prices have been increased phenomenally—seven per cent increase in the last few months. Prices of vegetables have already recorded considerable rise.
Against this background one has to read the latest column of Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the Ashoka University Vice-Chancellor and a regular columnist in The Indian Express. The article “Inglorious uncertainty” appears (…)

It is extremely rare to hear murmurs of discontent from within the Bharatiya Janata Party. Which of course does not mean that discontent does not ever exist.
A brave BJP Member of Parliament has, if you like, broken the hard ice and let out the best known secret of our times: “Modi does not like being asked questions” (The Indian Express, September 2, 2017) India’s vibrant media outlets have of course long swallowed this fact, reserving all their tired out barbs about lack of inner-party (…)