Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Report From Bundelkhand: Agro-Ecological Crisis Aggravated by Untimely Excess Rain and Hailstorms

  2 May 2015, by Bharat Dogra

  The already serious agro-ecological crisis in Bundelkhand region has aggravated recently by untimely excessive rain and hailstorms. With crop damage (wheat, paddy and oilseeds) in many villages ranging between 50 to almost 100 per cent, many families are migrating. Villagers face prospects of hunger and denial of basic needs. Suicides and trauma deaths among farmers are being widely reported almost every day. In a single district, Banda, for example, about 40 such deaths were reported in (…)

• Launch of the ‘Swaraj Abhiyan’ by Dissident Aap Members: The New ‘Temple Entry’ Movement

  2 May 2015

  by Aurobindo Ghose
  Fourteenth of April, 2015 was Ambedkar Jayanti, when I as a social activist from Delhi attended the Swaraj Samvad (a Dialogue on Present and Future Alternative Politics) held at Gurgaon, Haryana from 10:45 am to 6:45 pm. The participants to this Dialogue consisted of about 3000-3500 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) volunteers, mostly (2000-2500) drawn from all parts of the country, outside Delhi, organised and invited by 49 leaders of the AAP and spearheaded by four members of the (…)

• Moving Towards Dark Times

  2 May 2015, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Murders, killings, rioting over rotis have always taken place but going by the present condition of affected hectares there are more than indications of an extremely difficult period ahead.
  It is estimated that 94 lakh hectares of crop area across 14 States over the past three months have been affected. In Uttar Pradesh 29.64 lakh hectares of crop area was affected. In Haryana, 22.24 lakh hectares of crop area was affected. In Rajasthan 16.89 lakh hectares. In Maharashtra 9.89 (…)

• Congress Desperately Needs: a New Social Model for Survival

  2 May 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  This article arrived late. We are still using it as its contents retain their validity.
  Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s month long “leave of absence” will expire on April 19. He would resume his duties by addressing a rally of farmers organised by the party to protest against the Land Acquisition Bill of the Narendra Modi Government. His participation at the rally has acquired much bigger dimension only for the reason that his mother, Congress President Sonia (…)

• Significant and Encouraging

  25 April 2015

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  Rahul Gandhi’s return to active politics after an extended sabbatical and Sitaram Yechury’s elevation the post of the CPI-M General Secretary have been the most significant and encouraging developments of the last few days.
  What impressed one was Rahul’s unusually com-bative role against the Narendra Modi Government both in and outside Parliament. It was a different Rahul with all the facts and figures on his finger-tips; and the speeches were marked by pun, punch and (…)

• Encounter or Sheer Murder

  25 April 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Yet another encounter has taken place in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. I have lost the count. What is distressing is that even the human rights activists are practically quiet. Hardly anyone of them goes to the State to find out what happened on the ground, as was the practice till recently.
  This indicates not only the lessening of interest but also a tacit approval of the excesses commi-tted by the security forces. The Mufti Mohammad Sayeed Government, which announced to provide an (…)

• Lenin

  25 April 2015

  Remembering Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on his one hundred and fortyfifth birth anniversary on April 22, 2015, we are reproducing excerpts from the following article by Jawaharlal Nehru that appeared in The Hindu (April 5, 1928).
  by Jawaharlal Nehru
  ‘I know a pair of eyes which have been for ever numbed by the burning sorrow of the Terror,’ said Gorky of Lenin. This sorrow did not leave him to the end. It made him a fierce fanatic and gave him the strength of will to persevere and achieve. But (…)

• On Babasaheb Ambedkar

  25 April 2015

  by S.N. Sahu
  In the annals of India’s modern history spanning our freedom struggle two towering personalities—Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr B.R. Ambedkar—rose on their own and that too not under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr Ambedkar was one of the worst victims of untouchability. He was deliberately humiliated and excluded just because he was born as a Mahar, one of the lowest category of castes in the Dalit community in Maharashtra. After he came from Columbia University and (…)

• Jammu and Kashmir: Return of the Natives

  25 April 2015, by Badri Raina

  First a non-sequitor: the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley is fraught with great perplexities of emotion, organisation, and healthy sustainability. This contemplated return will not but be attended with consequences of historic import both for the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the subcontinent, one way or another. Of that there should be no doubt. Reason why the premises on which the project is undertaken need to be as comprehensively and objectively understood and acknowledged as (…)

• Bihar: Nitish’s Search for Strategy to Uplift Women ahead of Elections

  25 April 2015

  by Arun Srivastava
  Nitish Kumar has always endeared to promote women and their cause. It was in keeping with his political vision that on Bihar Diwas (March 22), while dedicating the day to the women of Bihar, he also came out with the policy-announcement that women would be the fulcrum of the future growth and economic development of the State. As if this was not enough, he also unveiled a Women Empower-ment Policy. This move of Nitish ought to be seen in the wider strategic perspective. (…)