Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Modi’s Non-rule

  6 June 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Information Minister Arun Jaitley is inviting editors from different parts of India to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to underline the achievements of his of first-year rule. This public relations exercise is nothing new because all his predecessors have done so.
  India’s icon, Jawaharlal Nehru, did not have to do so. Still, when India was licked at the hands of China in 1962, Nehru met editors to explain the debacle. Lal Bahadur Shastri had so much goodwill that he did not have to (…)

• Reality and Illusion

  6 June 2015, by Rajindar Sachar

  Last year, when the BJP with Modi as the Prime Minister romped home with an overwhelming majority of its own, people thought that for the next few years this government was untouchable and any mass discontent would be just wished away. Any such self-conceit amongst the BJP loyalists now lies shattered on the roads of towns and the fields of villages.
  The reasons are not far to seek. An old adage—that you can fool all the people for some time and some people for all the time but you cannot (…)

• Modi in the Gobi Desert

  6 June 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  A high-level visit is always best assessed the morning after. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mongolia offers a keyhole to take a peep at his visit to China (from where he headed for Ulanbator). Modi said immediately after arrival in Ulanbator (from Shanghai) that he could experience “true friendship”. We now have a fair idea what he’d missed from May 14-16 in China—“true friendship”.
  The highlights of Modi’s visit to Mongolia are three: a) decision that the two countries would (…)

• SCO’s Role in Afghanistan: Prospects and Challenges

  6 June 2015

  by Raj Kumar Sharma
  President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani had to delay his recent visit to India by a few hours as the Taliban intensified its spring offensive against the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the northern province of Kunduz. In the wake of the US-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, there are question-marks over the ability of the ANSF to hold their fort against the Taliban. At the same time, there are expectations of an increased role of the Shanghai Cooperation (…)

• Vice-Chancellors and Education Ministers compete to keep India’s Standards among the Lowest

  6 June 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  This is a real-life story that should worry us all because it shows how qualified Indians are defeated by our astonishingly inefficient system, in this case a university. This young man (YM) completed his Bachelor of Business Adminis-tration (BBA) course. On the strength of his provisional certificate, he got a job in Bahrain, but he was told to produce the original quickly. That didn’t worry him because he had already applied for the original certificate. However, the (…)

• On Goa’s Statehood Day

  6 June 2015, by Eduardo Faleiro

  On May 30 we celebrate the Goa Statehood Day. On this day, in 1987, Goa ceased to be an Union Territory and became the 25th State of the Union of India.
  Goa was liberated from the colonial rule in December 1961. After liberation a major contro-versy arose as to whether Goa should remain a separate territory or should merge into a neighbouring State, Maharashtra or Mysore. In 1967, an opinion poll was held, the only such referendum in independent India. It decided that Goa, Daman and Diu (…)

• Laloo’s Politics of exploiting Nitish’s BJP Phobia

  6 June 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  After strangulating the move for the unified Janata Parivar, the RJD chief, Laloo Prasad, is on the mission to downsize Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Laloo is more virulent in his attack on Nitish than his political rivals from the BJP. The intensity and nature of Laloo’s diatribe could be made out from the simple retort of Nitish that nobody could force him to do anything. Coming from Nitish this has wider implications; to which nature of compromise was Nitish (…)

• Karnataka Legislators are India’s Best Paid Legislators

  6 June 2015, by Ambrose Pinto

  With the passing of the twoBills—the Karnataka Ministers Salaries and Allowances (Amendment) Bill, 2015 and the Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pensions and allowances (Amendment) Bill, 2015—on March 30, 2015 without any debate, the legislators of Karnataka have become the richest legislators of the country. The voting was unanimous in a House that was deeply polarised after the controversy of the suicide of an IAS officer, D. K. Ravi, and the illegal denotification of the Arkavathi layout (…)

• Contours of China Crisis

  6 June 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Twentysix years ago, N.C. had left for China when the Tiananmen bloodbath took place on June 4, 1989. Apart from his despatches which appeared in The Times of India on the tragedy that befell that great country at that time, he also wrote this detailed piece which was published in Mainstream (June 17, 1989). This was an enlarged version of an article in The Times of India (June 12, 1989).
  The contours of the emerging set-up in China are still very blurred as the (…)

• More than 300 days of Hate and Communal Violence

  6 June 2015

  COMMUNICATION
  We are really proud of the most distinctive features of our country, that is, it is the largest parliamentary democracy of the world, the abode of the highly precious national composite culture—or Ganga-Jamni culture—based on the principle of unity in diversity and having a secular Constitution which is not irreligious but respects all religions and gives every citizen full religious freedom. But alas, since May 26, 2014 when the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi came (…)