Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Fly High or Crash Land

  30 March 2015, by N V K Murthy

  The new BJP Government has placed its first complete Budget before Parliament. It shows great hope. The Finance Minister has anticipated a growth rate of 8.5 per cent. The Economist of February 21-27 has an editorial on the subject with the title “India’s chance to Fly”. The editorial has suggested reforms in three areas: Land, Labour and Power. These areas are crucial but one may not agree entirely with the direction of changes suggested.
  The editorial recommends that the acquisition of (…)

• Tedious Neighbours

  30 March 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Our neighbouring countries are getting curiouser and curiouser. Pakistan is determined to free Zia-ur Rahman Lakhvi who had masterminded the Mumbai attack in 2008 when some 165 people were killed at Hotel Taj through the sea, near the Gateway of India. The court has released him due to lack of evidence. This is despite the clinching proof that India has provided against him.
  Either Pakistan is whetting the evidence that New Delhi provides or the judge hearing the case has been under (…)

• Vedic Science: The hue of Saffron Ideology

  30 March 2015

  by Navneet Sharma, Pradeep Nair and Harikrishnan B.
  “Ancient Sanskrit literature is full of descriptions of flying machines — Vimanas.... [T]he scientist sages Agastya and Bharadwaja had developed the lore of aircraft construction. Aeronautics or Vaimaanika Shastra is a part of Yantra Sarvasva of Bharadwaja. This is also known as Brihadvimaana Shastra...The knowledge of aeronautics is described in Sanskrit in 100 sections, eight chapters, 500 principles and 3000 slokas. Great sage (…)

• West Bengal at Crossroads: An Insight into the Emerging Political Dynamics

  30 March 2015

  by Ayan Guha
  Politics of West Bengal is going through a transition. The Left seems to be on a road to steady decline while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking poised to take on the role of the principal Opposition to the Trinamul Congress (TMC). There are already enough signs that indicate that the organised domain of politics has at last started to cede space to the BJP in West Bengal.
  The rise of the BJP as a credible political force apparently challenges the general notion (…)

• Morarji Rubbished early Defence Efforts; New Moves must Make Up for Lost Decades

  30 March 2015, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  At the Aero India show in Bangalore, Narendra Modi made a statement that could well be a national motto. Said he: “I don’t want India to be No. 1 in the import of defence equipment... We should export.” This is an epiphany that took some six decades to come to our leaders. Import of fighter planes, submarines and field guns meant not only big money going to foreign companies, but also dependence on those companies in a military emergency. India, a leader in space technology and (…)

• Public Hero — Paying for Honesty

  30 March 2015, by Sudhir Vombatkere

  There is a joke doing the rounds, on failure of the pillars of the Constitution. Gandhiji in heaven asks Chitragupta as to how the three monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) are doing in India. Chitragupta replies that all three are doing well—andha bandar kanoon ban gaya; behera bandar sarkar ban gaya; aur goonga bandar vidhayak ban gaya. The desperate helplessness and frustration of people in political jokes precedes anarchic violence.
  The recent untimely death of IAS (…)

• Subhadra Kumari Chauhan — Poet, Writer, Freedom Fighter and Friend of the Poor

  30 March 2015, by Reshma Bharti

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  india’s freedom movement was a time of high ideals for many writers and poets which inspired them to devote their literary talents and creativity to the larger cause of liberation of their people and country. In the process these writers and poets accepted many hardships including jail sentences. Subhadra Kumari Chauhan (1904-1948) was one such writer who combined the writer and activist roles with a zeal and devotion which won her the heartfelt affection of millions of (…)

• SAARC, South Asia And Imperative Beyond Tired Rhetoric

  30 March 2015

  by Dev Pathak
  The SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Charter Day on December 8, 2014 occasioned a moment for a critical self-reflection. This was also pertinent with reference to the recent spurt of uncanny euphoria amongst the political leadership in the region and platitudes on the possibilities of strengthening regional consciousness. In a span of six months the idea of South Asia, in association with SAARC, seems to have acquired momentum worth critical and (…)

• Putin declassifies the Crimea file

  30 March 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s candid remarks for nearly an hour on the national television on Friday (March 13), coinciding with the first anniversary of Crimea becoming part of Russia once again, are the first exhaustive Kremlin accounts of the dramatic events last year following the ‘regime change’ in Kiev in February 2014.
  Putin divulged some ‘operational’ details, which become nuggets of history. First, Putin disclosed that the Russian “electronic surveill-ance services” had (…)

• Whither Communist Party?

  30 March 2015, by Ajayakumar Kodoth

  The 22nd Congress of the CPI has begun on March 25 at Puducherry. The following article was intended to be published before the Congress but reached us late. It is thus being published now. More articles on the Left will be carried in subsequent issues.
  by Ajayakumar Kodoth
  “It must be remembered that the general principles underlying the Communist doctrine, that is, the economic principles of social organisation, have been accepted by some of the best minds of the age, and it does not (…)