Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Salman, Vishwas, Gadkari, Badals

  9 May 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  With Salman Khan convicted under culpable homicide in the 2002 hit-and-run case, the coming days will lie fitted with news reports and endless discussions focusing on him and what lies ahead... for him, for his clan, for his films and fans. The build-up had begun last week itself, with news channels churning out hurriedly gathered details to him, his hold in Bollywood... Just about slight disruption last evening, with the spotlight changing gear, on the AAP’s Kumar Vishwas, and (…)

• NGOs and Agrarian Crises

  9 May 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  It is unfortunate that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is harassing and hounding the NGOs. Probably, the party’s leaders do not realise that many of its members were once themselves NGOs. When the Jana Sangh merged into the Janata Party after successfully resisting the authoritarian rule of Mrs Indira Gandhi, they were part of the struggle to uphold human rights, which the then ruling Congress Party had trampled upon mercilessly. How can those very people be anti-NGO now?
  Accounts of (…)

• Unravelling the Nuances of Ghani’s India Visit

  9 May 2015

  by Raj Kumar Sharma
  The Context
  Afghanistan is in a state of security and economic transition, as the US-NATO forces have begun their withdrawal from the country in 2014. The President of Afghanistan, Dr Ashraf Ghani, paid his first visit to India on April 27-29, 2015, seven months after being elected as the President of the war-torn country and having already visited China, the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. New governments assumed office in both India and Afghanistan in 2014 and (…)

• Afghan Test Case

  9 May 2015, by Uttam Sen

  The Afghan President, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s mindfulness of India in his country’s scheme of things could well have been distilled in the interview he gave a leading Indian daily. Creating the right of way by road for goods from Kabul past the Wagah checkpost to India and beyond and vice versa to Central Asia is probably a former technocrat’s most vivid statement of intent. If and when he has his way, Afghan goods trucks will be rumbling down to Kolkata and Chittagong. The stabilisation of (…)

• Thinking Big, China is Changing the World Order; with Mixed Priorities, we can but Tag Along

  9 May 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It is now clear that China is seeking to change the way the world is run. Its two big schemes—the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, or Belt and Road in short—are so daring and perceptive that the world is struck yet again by the long-term view of China’s strategists. Add to this the concept of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its runaway success—and we can see China overtaking America in influence even without
  getting anywhere near its (…)

• Enormity of Nepal’s Tragedy

  2 May 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  While fears of epidemic mount in Kathmandu with many bodies yet to be removed, Nepal’s PM Sushil Koirala has said the death toll in last Saturday’s 7.9-intensity earthquake that rocked the Himalayan state with unprecedented ferocity—it was the worst such natural calamity the country experienced in 81 years—could touch 10,000 since information from the affected remote villages is yet to come. South Asia has not been witness to such a terrible human tragedy in recent times and all (…)

• Chinese Bonanza for Pakistan: In the Wider Interest?

  2 May 2015, by Uttam Sen

  China’s multifaceted initiative on Pakistan has been received pragmatically by public opinion in India on the watch for what works best. Even the windfall of submarines, as long as it is not technically converted into a platform for directing a nuclear-tipped second strike at India, has not produced knee-jerk alarm, the Defence Minister briefly spelling out a more ambitious schedule. It is now tacitly taken for granted that the various aspects of China’s policies include the Pakistani proxy (…)

• Ten Lodestars From Xi’s Pakistan Visit

  2 May 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Looking at it from any angle, the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Pakistan has been an extraordinary event. To be sure, Pakistan experienced the “Midas touch”. Almost overnight, there is buzz that Pakistan is an overlooked reform story without reform valuations. And this is according to the prestigious London-based Renaissance Capital. But Xi’s visit was not exclusively business-driven, either, since whatever China touches today—even a new bank—also becomes “political”. (…)

• Why ‘May’ Day?

  2 May 2015, by Anil Rajimwale

  This year again, the world is celebrating the First of May as the May Day, a day of labour struggle, solidarity and festival. It would be interesting to learn why the month of May was chosen for the first all-American industrial strike in 1886, which led to the birth of May Day or the International Labour Day.
  The month of May has traditionally been a festive one in Western history. May was celebrated as ancient spring festival in the northern hemisphere. In ancient Rome, days in May were (…)

• Congress of the Future

  2 May 2015, by Sitaram Yechury

  At its 21st Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist redoubled its resolve for strengthening the Party, the class and mass organisations and unleashing powerful people’s struggles for forging the Left and Democratic Front, based on a programmatic alternative to
  the current policies being pursued by the Indian ruling classes, with the eventual aim of replacing the bourgeois-landlord class rule by the People’s Democratic Front led by the working class. This is the only way that the (…)