Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Tapi Gas Pipeline: Hopes And Challenges

  22 February 2016

  by R.G. Gidadhubli
  It is indeed a historic event that leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India broke ground on the December 13, 2015 giving a big push to the long awaited TAPI gas pipeline project linking Central Asia and South Asia. This ceremony was held in Turkmenistan’s southern city of Mary in the Karakorum desert which is an important location on this proposed pipeline route. Some basic facts are as follws: the project will be costing about $ 10 billion; the total (…)

• Indo-Pak Diplomacy: Modi’s Pakistan Policy

  22 February 2016

  by Zainab Akhter
  Background
  The India-Pakistan conflict is categorised as one of the most enduring due to its continuity and longevity since the division of the sub-continent albeit with varying degrees. The crux of the dispute is largely over Kashmir, territories and water, besides a nuclear arms race since 1998. The unresolved disputes over time have resulted in deep-rooted mistrust and hostility between the two nations with a deep impact on the dimension of inter-state and societal (…)

• David Headley’s revelations

  22 February 2016

  by R.B. Sreekumar
  By merely reiterating his earlier statement on Ishrat Jehan, killed by the Gujarat Police, in collaboration with the Central IB, David Coleman Headley did not provide any fruitful and significant inputs facilitating further probes by the Indian security agencies. Earlier also Headley stated that Ishrat Jehan was an LeT operative, without related information about her network and hierarchy in the LeT and specific operations carried out by she and her friends in India and (…)

• One Death: Several Questions

  14 February 2016

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  After battling against death for eight days, Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Kopad breathed his last at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi this morning. The poignancy of his death becomes more acute when it is borne in mind that he has left behind his young wife and a two-year-old daughter. The very fact that he could keep himself alive for five long days after an avalanche buried him and several others under 35 feet of snow at an altitude of 19,600 feet atop (…)

• Perverted Logic of Powerful Corporate Interests drive the India-France Nuclear Connection

  14 February 2016, by Harsh Kapoor

  by Harsh Kapoor
  The French President was in India as the chief guest at the surreal nationalist military parade of January 26, 2016. As is the practice, he was accompanied by a high-powered delegation and many multilateral deals got signed between the two countries. There are big ones that have been in the news, have been in the making for many years and may still take time to fructify. These concern the sale by France of nuclear power plants and of flying war toys to India.
  India’s (…)

• Sangh-BJP Atacks and Police Brutality Cannot Stop the Battle for Justice for Rohith

  14 February 2016

  The following is the editorial in ML Update (a CPI-ML weekly newsmagazine) of February 2-8, 2016.
  It is being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers.
  The institutional murder of young Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad has shocked the entire country and students everywhere have erupted in protests. Given the crucial involvement of the BJP’s Central Minis-ters, Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani, in the entire episode, the resignation of these (…)

• In Lieu of a Bio-data

  14 February 2016

  TRIBUTE
  Renowned Professor of Political Theory at the University of Delhi and well-known Marxist thinker Prof Randhir Singh, 95, passed away in Delhi on January 31 night. He was cremated at the Lodhi Crematorium in the evening of February 1, 2016 before a large group of students, colleagues, friends and admirers.
  Prof Manoranjan Mohanty, a noted political scientist, was are of the first post-graduate students taught by Prof Singh. “I had come to Delhi for an MA and he was my professor,” (…)

• On the Question of Socialism Today

  14 February 2016, by Randhir Singh

  The following are excerpts from the conlcuding part of an address that Prof Randhir Singh delivered to the journal Itihasbodh at Allahabad on March 8, 2007. The full text of the address, entitled ‘Future of Socialism’, is available in the Monthly Review website http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org The concluding part of the address was published in Mainstream (February 16, 2008).
  It was Engels’ adjuration to followers to ‘not pick quotations from Marx or from him as if from sacred texts, but (…)

• Prof Randhir Singh: The Compulsive Critique

  14 February 2016, by Rup Narayan Das

  A STUDENT’S TRIBUTE
  I learnt about the passing away of Prof Randhir Singh while flipping through the newspaper, The Tribune. Not many newspapers in India reported his passing away, although there were a couple of articles in leading newspapers. The non-coverage of his demise was a bit shocking to his students like me who placed him on a high pedestal for his profound scholarship, his conviction, intellectual rigour, critical analysis and incisive insight.
  When I joined the Delhi (…)

• Crisis in the Social Sector

  13 February 2016, by Bharat Dogra

  A crisis situation has emerged in the social sector in several parts of the country due to lack of availability of adequate financial resources.
  The ‘social sector’ includes women and child development, nutrition, health, education, panchayat raj, special provisions for weaker sections (Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities etc.), some aspects of agriculture and water (such as special schemes for livelihood protection, drinking water and sanitation for weaker (…)