Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• On Education Policy

  8 August 2015

  The people of Goa can be justifiably proud of the progress achieved over the last five decades in core sectors such as education. The literacy rate in Goa was about 30 per centat the time of liberation. It is now hundred per centif we exclude some persons above the age of 50 years. In 1961, in my own village there was just one primary school with about hundred students. The village has now been subdivided into three panchayats and has several primary schools and high schools with thousands (…)

• On Wage Settlement of Bank Employees

  8 August 2015

  by Basudev Ganguly
  Ultimately the bipartite talks between the IBA and bank unions are over and the tenth bipartite settlement has been arrived at. Many questions and issues have cropped up in the meantime.
  a) Are the bipartite settlements being carried forward with the purpose of achieving signifi-cant achievements towards improving service conditions, enhancing wages and super-annuation benefits?
  b) It is the unions’ mental bankruptcy to accept a new vertical of 7.75 per cent as (…)

• Underprivileged Achievers in the Jungle of Predators

  8 August 2015, by A K Biswas

  The sparkling success of two underprivileged brothers, Raju and Brijesh Saroj, of village Rehua Lalganj, district Pratapgarh of Uttar Pradesh in the highly competitive IIT entrance test have earned loud appreciations from home and abroad. Raju secured the 167th and Brijesh the 410th rank in the merit list. Dharamraj, a mill-hand in Surat, Gujarat, earns a monthly sum of Rs 12,000 for a family of seven persons. Knowing their father’s inability to finance their expensive engineering education (…)

• Origins, Nature and Solution of the European Crisis

  8 August 2015

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  by Nirupam Sen
  “Europe in Question — and what to do about it” by Stuart Holland; published by Spokesman, UK; 2015; 301 pages; price: GBP 15.
  At present, Stuart Holland teaches economics in Portugal and Hungary. What distinguishes Stuart Holland from most economists is that he is both a brilliant theorist and has been a brilliant practitioner, both in the UK and in Europe. For long he was a Labour MP and the Shadow Minister for International Development in the British (…)

• Historic Naga Deal Explained: this could end India’s Longest Insurgency

  8 August 2015

  by Bharat Bhushan
  The historic peace accord with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), signed on August 3, 2015, has been a long time coming.
  It was expected that the agreement would be announced in a few months’ time. What seems to have hastened it is the indisposition of the chairman of the NSCN (IM), Isak Chishi Swu. He is in a hospital in the Capital, reportedly with multiple organ failure. He is supposed to have signed the agreement while in a wheelchair. (…)

• Dr N.P. Gupta — A Committed Worker for Peace

  8 August 2015, by Arun Kumar

  TRIBUTE
  Dr N.P. Gupta, a doctor by profession, passed away on July 30, 2015 at the age of 93 years. He had retired three decades back as the Deputy Director General, ICMR.
  I knew him in my early days as a contemporary of my father, Late Prof Asha Ram. They were together with friends like P.C. Joshi, Sulekh Chandra Gupta, and R.K. Garg (a student of my father in Allahabad University). They were all Communists to begin with but remained Marxists till the end even if disillusioned with the (…)

• Kashmir: The Harsh Reality

  8 August 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Last fortnight I was in the Kashmir Valley. My first visit after the floods of 2014 and also after the PDP-BJP tie-up in the State of J&K. And the first thing I wanted to grasp were those expected changes in the backdrop of the ‘packages’ worth crores getting announced from the Centre. After all, with supposed crores getting pumped into the State there ought to be visible betterment. Nah, I couldn’t get to see even traces of it. Nothing less than a shock, seeing the run-down (…)

• Voice of Justice Cries in Lonely Silence

  31 July 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  This morning has put an end to the endless speculations whether Yakub Memon would be hanged. He was hanged. His execution, however, does not provide answers to a whole gamut of uncomfortable questions before the people and polity. The first of course is: why was his hanging highly politicised and communalised? Hyper-nationalism was worked up to a fever-pitch. Nationalism and patriotism were reduced to a simplistic equation: Do you or do you not support Yakub’s hanging? (…)

• Justice in Peril

  31 July 2015, by P.B. Sawant

  The current events have raised some ponde-rable questions relating to our criminal justice system. The system involves three different institutions—the investigating agencies, the prosecution and the Courts. The Courts have to decide the cases on the basis of the evidence, law and jurisprudence. The evidence is collected by the investigating agencies according to their own methods which are inscrutable. The prosecution has to assist the Court by presenting its case as fairly as possible. (…)

• Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: a Lover of Humanity

  31 July 2015

  TRIBUTE
  by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
  Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality Emily Dickinson
  Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s death was sudden, shocking and sad for the reason that the country lost a man who was really true, honest, literally simplicity incarnated and a darling of all Indians. He was a man of high scholarship and attained the zenith of achievements though he was born in a simple family.
  His great values (…)