Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Understanding National Politics Post-2014

  20 September 2015

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Ranbir Singh
  India’s 2014 Elections, A Modi-led BJP Sweep by Paul Wallace (ed.); Sage Publications, New Delhi; 2015; pages xxiv + 427; Price: Rs 1250.
  This book is a continuation of the earlier election studies, Indian Politics and the 1998 Elections: Regionalization, Hindutava and State Politics (1999); India’s 1999 Elections and the 20th Century Politics (2003), India’s 2004 Elections: Grassroots and National Perspectives (2007) and India: 2009 Elections Coalition (…)

• Eternal Vigilance Necessary to Protect Our Democracy

  20 September 2015

  by Mahi Pal Singh
  Within 15 months of coming to power at the Centre, the Narendra Modi Government has amply shown its true colours. If we compare what Narendra Modi, the Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP, and the party’s President Amit Shah, had promised to the voters with what the government has done so far, the wide difference between the promises and implementation comes out clearly. Modi had made a tall claim to bring back black money stashed in foreign accounts and put in every (…)

• Role of Women in Social Movements across the World: Case Study of Telangana

  20 September 2015

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  by Sreerupa Saha
  Introduction: Note on Movement and Gender
  Movements are not themselves actors, move-ments are something that people create to press for social change. They are spaces that are made by people to allow relationships between them that can challenge power. Social movements are generally seen as phenomena of the modern era and industrialised society, whether located in the “First” world or not. Industrialisation and urbanisation, technological advancements, (…)

• As Parties Plunder by turn, People’s Only Choice is Negative Voting. That doesn’t seem to Work

  20 September 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It has the appearance of a planned conspiracy. A party gets power, indulges in abominable corruption and misdeeds and is then thrown out by disgusted voters. But the next party that comes to power proves just as abominable, so voters throw it out, letting the earlier party come back to power. Thus voters end up as fools while all parties get a chance to plunder the country by turn.
  Indira Gandhi’s Emergency atrocities angered the people so much that they did the unthinkable: (…)

• Kilvenmani to Javkheda: An Antithesis to Ambedkar’s Nation

  20 September 2015

  by Navneet Sharma and Pradeep Nair
  “If Hindu raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and frater-nity.......” —B.R. Ambedkar
  The mighty Hindu cultural organisation’s attempt to label Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu’ reformist gets disbanded even by a faint understanding of Ambedkar. A better comprehension of Ambedkarism challenges the prognosis of Hindutva, Hindudom and the Akhand (…)

• Refugees in Europe, Rohingyas in New Delhi

  20 September 2015

  MUSINGS
  No, I can’t get over the picture of the little Syrian boy, three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, lying dead by the sea-shore. Each time I look at it, tears continue trickling and a huge sense of helplessness-cum-sorrow overtakes...The innocence of a helpless fleeing refugee child, compounded by the pain of his father and that of the thousands of fleeing refugees ...fleeing into a nowhere of sorts. No country wants to accept these refugees. European political heads and tails coming in way, (…)

• Prof K.M. Shrivastava Is No More

  20 September 2015

  Prof K.M. Shrivastava, seniormost Professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi, collapsed suddenly on August 28 night at the Nizamuddin Railway Station, New Delhi. He was 63. He had just returned to Delhi from the IIMC-Jammu and reached Nizamuddin Railway Station from the Delhi Airport to board a train for Bhopal. Prof Shrivastava was with a former student, who had come to drop him at the station, when he collapsed. Prof Shrivastava was rushed to the All India (…)

• Nationwide TU Strike, Remembering 1965 War

  5 September 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  While the newspapers—and the electronic media in particular—are full of detailed accounts of the sordid murder of Sheena Bora magnifying the role of Indira Mukerjea behind the entire episode, the news of the nationwide strike called by 10 central trade union organisations, that disrupted normal life in different parts of the country yesterday, could find space only in the inside pages of major newspapers claiming to be national dailies. This only betrays the skewed priorities of (…)

• Challenges before Rationalists

  5 September 2015, by P.B. Sawant

  The irrational thinking and doing is mostly the result of desperation and loss of balance of mind. People fall a victim to it on account of three main reasons: i) ignorance and fundamentalism which is nothing but orthodoxy combined with fan-aticism; ii) the uncontrolled passions released by the inherent enemies of Man, namely, lust, anger, greed, fear, egoism, jealousy and possessive love; and iii) insecure and uncertain conditions of life.
  Ignorance may be curbed by proper education (…)

• Decoding the Grammar of Minority Politics

  5 September 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  The following article was sent sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
  It is now being belatedly published as its contents retain considerable relevance.
  After 68 years of independence any call from senior Muslim clergy to celebrate the national day with a spirit of patriotism would undou-btedly give rise to some amount of anxiety. The leading Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom, Deoband, has asked Muslims to put up the national flag on their (…)