Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Aam Adami Party Today — Crisis of Success

  9 May 2015, by Anand Kumar

  Indian democracy is known to spring surprises at most unexpected moments since its inception. From institutionalisation of the multi-party system and parliamentary elections within a largely poor, illiterate and agrarian social setting in the 1960s to the abandoning of an authoritarian regime in mid-1970s, there are a number of striking achievements to the credit of the Indian electorate.
  The twentyfirst century India is credited with one more astonishing milestone in the form of emergence (…)

• Trinamul Sweeps Civic Elections In Bengal: Glory Marred By Violence

  9 May 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  Municipal elections were held in West Bengal on April 18 and 25. As expected and as predicted by pre-poll surveys, the ruling Trinamul Congress swept the polls, capturing seventy of the ninetytwo civic bodies. Six were captured by the Left, five by the Congress while in twelve no party got a clear majority. The BJP drew a blank, failing to capture a single body. Its vote percentage declined sharply by eight per cent compared to its performance in the Lok Sabha elections last year.
  What is (…)

• Modi Government’s Budget sans Destination and Direction

  9 May 2015

  by A.V.V.S.K. Rao
  “Striving to better, Oft we mar what’s well.” —William Shakespeare
  For a country like India opting for a mid-way path as against the neo-liberal path in the context of globalisation, Budget-making is not an easy task. It requires choosing a new set of objectives, priorities, strategies and resource mobilisation measures.
  On March 1, 2015, when the Budget for 2015-16 was presented in Parliament, laymen got the impression that the Modi Government has come up with a (…)

• The Rafale Deal: Was there an Alternative?

  9 May 2015, by Barun Das Gupta

  COMMUNICATION
  Two critical comments on the recently-concluded Indo-French deal on Rafale MMRCA have been carried by the Mainstream (April 18, 2015). One critic has said that the Rafale was designed in 1986 and given the fact that the induction of these aircraft in the IAF will take another ten years’ time, India will be acquiring 40-year old technology at a high price. There is nothing new and surprising about it. The West (the European countries and the United States) has never sold (…)

• How Far Can the Air Force’s Biases Go?

  9 May 2015, by Ashok Parthasarathi

  In the recent past, there have been several developments reflecting the title of this article. The first is the government‘s very close-to-formal decision-taking on a modern single piston engine aircraft for the induction training of the IAF’s rookee pilots. The HAL’s offer of the HTT-40 aircraft to meet approximately 70 of the IAF’s approved approximately 180 such basic trainers with the bulk of some 130 PC-7 Mark II being bought outright from the Swiss company Pilatus. Going in for the (…)

• Death of a Free Thinker

  9 May 2015

  by Nirupam Hazra
  Every year, 21st February is observed as the International Mother Tongue Day since 2000. The historic significance of the day is intricately associated with the liberation movement of Bangladesh. In 1952, the peaceful demonstration of university students demanding, among other things, recognition of Bengali as one of the national languages in erstwhile East Pakistan was violently crushed. Literally it was, in many ways, the beginning of a struggle for free-speech, (…)

• War Poems

  9 May 2015

  May 9, 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of Victory over Fascism in the Second World War. On this occasion we carry poems by Russian poets who, like all other citizans of their country, actively participated in the struggle to rid the world of the fascist menace and bore the real brunt of that War.
  These times of ours are rather hard upon the pen.
  Vladimir Mayakovsky
  You’ll hear the ring of metal in my voice.
  Direct and heavy into life I came.
  Not all will die, nor all be (…)

• The River of History

  9 May 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  This week all the world over is being celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the victory over fascism. For, this was the week, thirty years ago, when the Hitler war-machine was smashed and the Soviet soldiers hoisted the Red Flag over the war-ravaged Reichstag building in Berlin.
  This was a great turning point in the history of humanity. For, it saw the end of an order in which an exploitative power could conquer countries and enslave nations. Hitler was the last of (…)

• A Savage Civilisation

  9 May 2015

  May 9 this year marks not only the seventieth anniversary of Victory over Fascism but also the one hundred and fiftyfourth birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. As our homage of Gurudev on this occasion we are reproducing this letter written by him to Amiya Chakravarty from Gauripur Bhavan, Kalimpong on June 20, 1940. —Editor
  by Rabindranath Tagore
  A few centuries back European civilisation had suddenly started to hatch a large brood of vaishyar1children. Eager for profit these (…)

• Report from Ajmer District: Struggle of Kishangarh Farmers Exposes Glaring Injustice in Land Acquisition

  9 May 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  So many senior politicians have been saying time and again that as far as possible efforts will be made to avoide acquiring fertile and irrigated farmland. Even the Prime Minister has said that fertile and irrigated farmland should be acquired only as a last resort. Several political leaders have also said that land acquisition will be done honestly and with transparency, ensuring justice to farmers and providing enough opportunity to them to assert their demands.
  However, all these have (…)