Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• MPs waste their Brilliance on Virulent Attacks; It’s time to ask: Where are we Headed?

  31 August 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Wednesday, August 12, was a miracle day in Indian history. People were thrilled by a rarest-of-rare spectacle—a debate in Parliament. It lasted barely five hours and ended in an anticlimax, but that brief interlude was sheer
  excitement for citizens who had seen several thousand hours being wiped out in the last dozen or so years by parliamentarians uninterested in anything but shouting. August 12 was a tonic.
  It was also a reminder of the presence in our Parliament of some (…)

• Tribute: Ordinary Indian Extraordinaire — People’s President Abdul Kalam

  31 August 2015, by A V V S K Rao

  “If I am asked who is the greatest man? I answer the best; And if I am required to say who is the best? I reply he that has deserved most of his fellow creatures.” —Sir William Jones
  India is fortunate to have two great men as its Presidents—one is Plato’s philosopher king ideal, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a great philosopher from Oxford in the 20th century (our second President), and the other Archimedes personifi-cation Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a defence scientist in the 21st century, as (…)

• Draft Code of Behaviour in Outer Space: Why it Needs to be Thwarted

  31 August 2015, by Benjamin Todd

  The US is seeking to persuade the Government of India to support its initiative to pass the West’s draft Code of Behaviour in Outer Space. This document militates against India’s national interests.
  If this document, proposed by the Americans and European Union, is passed in the UN General Assembly, it will completely ruin the idea of a comprehensive binding agreement in this important sphere and replace it with a Code. The draft includes references to the American and Europeen defence and (…)

• The Most Urgent Task Today

  15 August 2015, by SC

  Editorial
  As we approach our sixtyninth Independence Day, to be observed in five days time, the situation in the domestic sphere has turned from bad to worse.
  The last fifteen months have been witness to the manner in which the Narendra Modi dispensation has upheld the banner of majoritarian communalism thereby seeking to irreparably damage the ideal of secular democracy that constitutes the foundation of independent India’s nationhood as exemplified by the country’s Constitution. The (…)

• India — 2015

  15 August 2015, by Badri Raina

  More than the menace of a Monsoon Cloud now stalks the land. Unrelenting stabs of imbecile assertion Maul the body politic as newborn Titans roll their sleeves and Bare their fangs against A republic whose slovenly habits Of accomodation rebuke The loud muscle of oppressive swagger. The command is out: let every Flower in the realm henceforth Take on but one shape, size, and Colour, or be deemed a trojan horse, Rather than a rose or a carnation, Asking to be decapitated root And branch, (…)

• On Death Penalty

  15 August 2015, by P.B. Sawant

  The following piece was written against the backdrop of Yakub Memon’s execution.
  The question is often asked if we have a right to take life when we cannot give it. The right question to be asked in this connection is whether the death penalty is a rational sentence. Will not life imprisonment instead of life extinguishment serve the purpose? The intent of both punishments is to remove the man from the society, since on account of the heinous and inhuman act he committed he does not (…)

• New Struggle for Freedom

  15 August 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Fifteen years to go before the onset of the Twentyfirst Century and thirtyeight years since the Tricolour was hoisted on the ramparts of the Red Fort in 1947, this year’s celebration of August Fifteenth can very well be made the starting point for preparing the blueprint for modernising this nation of seven hundred million people.
  To modernise a country with such amazingly uneven development—in which primitive tribal economy co-exists with highly advanced modern (…)

• On Independence Day

  15 August 2015, by Eduardo Faleiro

  On August 15, we celebrate the Independence Day. On that day, in 1947, Prime Minister Nehru proclaimed a tryst with destiny, “a moment which comes but rarely in history when we step from the old into the new, when an age ends and the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance”.
  The colonial rule destroyed the Indian economy and greatly impoverished the people of India. An estimate by the Cambridge historian, Angus Wilson, reveals that in 1700, India’s share of the world income was (…)

• Quest for Alternative Politics: First 100 days of Swaraj Abhiyan

  15 August 2015, by Anand Kumar

  Independence Day is the annual occasion of remembering the ideals and events of our freedom struggle. It gives the opportunity of assessing the successes and failures in realising the vision of Swaraj which evolved during the national movement since the days of Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi, Nehru, Subhas and Ambedkar. From this point of view, 2015 has been an interesting year in the democratic journey of India around the goals of Swaraj. There were interesting developments about political (…)

• The Emergency Deserves Larger Reflections

  15 August 2015, by Ajay K. Mehra

  On the 40th anniversary of the Internal Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi on June 26, 1975, former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani’s caution against its recurrence drowned the real issues in the resulting din. One set of reactions, viewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regime in the mirror of the 2002 riots and picking up trends and antiphons from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under a new leadership since the 2014 elections, interpreted it to mean undemocratic, if not (…)