2018

COMMUNICATION
I am delighted to read Mainstream’s founder-editor, N.C.’s article “Human Rights: Basic Issues” (published on pp. 11-12 in the Mainstream issue of December 9, 2017). Though the lucid but thought-provoking article was written 25 years ago, it is more relevant in the present situation. The human rights situation throughout the country is, to say the least, very much alarming. One may not agree with all the views expressed in the article but the concerns articulated in the (…)

When former Congress President Sonia Gandhi said that they would not allow the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to return to power, she hinted at a joint action on the part of the Opposition. It also means that she does not want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to win a second term. On its own, the Congress does not have the numbers to pose any threat to the BJP-run government or Modi.
In all probability, as things stand today, Modi looks good enough to return to power. The three reverses in (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The politics of communal chasm and hatred has been the gift of the Hindu hardliners. Whether it has been the partition of India or marginalisation of the Muslims in independent India, these hardliners have simply worked to vitiate the communal harmony. No doubt the Muslim fundamentalists have only acted to further worsen the situation.
I often wonder: can’t these elements allow the people to live in peace? While the marginalisation of Muslims began soon after (…)

IMPRESSIONS
We haven’t had a more turbulent Ram Navami in recent memory. In the name of the Lord who exiled his own wife for what he considered dharma, several adharmic activities were carried out by his alleged followers. The government in Delhi contributed its share of adharma with arbitrary moves purportedly to stop fake news. But revelations that its own party was second to none in the fake news industry forced it to make a retreat, a suspiciously fake retreat.
Ram Navami is meant to (…)

by Kunal Ghosh
On March 28, 2018 the Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declared that question papers of Class-10 Mathematics and Class-12 Economics had been leaked a few days before the board exams, and therefore these two examinations would be re-held on a date to be announced later. This has raised a howl from the student community as entirely expected, and the media is abuzz with all kinds of comments and political thrusts and counter-thrusts. The Minister of (…)

by K. Gireesan, D. Jeevan Kumar, M. Lingaraju and Jos Chathukulam
This is a brief report on a national seminar held at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru on December 29-30, 2017 to explore the ideas of J.C. Kumarappa on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary. The seminar sought to take stock of the implications of his ideas for contemporary India, especially in relation to decentralisation and sustainable development.
The seminar was organised jointly by (…)

In the Supreme Court hearing on Aadhaar, before a two-judge Bench, in May 2017, the then Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, while countering the petitioners’ objections to the government’s move, said that their “arguments on so-called privacy and bodily intrusions are bogus”. He also offered pro-welfare, anti-corruption and anti-terrorist arguments in favour of Aadhaar: “It is an effective tool to check terror financing and black money. It ensures that money meant for poor people reaches (…)

TRIBUTE
by Sankar Ray
The death of Jam Saqi, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Pakistan, on March 5, 2018 in Hyderabad, Sindh province, revived pensive as well as nostalgic memories especially among his comrades and admirers in Pakistan and the fast-depleting generation of veterans who worked with him or were abreast of the intrepid resistance against military-bureaucratic-feudal ruling class of Pakistan. For the younger generation of Pakistanis who have a (…)

The annual event of the World Economic Forum now underway in Switzerland is with us again. Indeed, it is the scent of the air. This annual jamboree of the world’s top politicians, businessmen and international organisations like the IMF, World Bank and WTO is our planet’s capitalist show-case. Everybody who is anybody on the world stage is at Davos. The pronouncements at Davos are eagerly looked forward to by a non-existent entity called the “international community”. The political leaders (…)

COMMUNICATION
We are concerned about the condition of the memorial of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru which is located in New Delhi’s Teen Murti Bhavan. We feel sad to note that the Teen Murti Bhavan is in a condition which raises several questions about transparency and accountability of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
For some months now, the Teen Murti Bhavan has been hosting an exhibition on two Prime Ministers, Atal Behari Vajpayee and P.V. Narasimha Rao. There is no (…)