Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Shastri’s New Torments / Language: Pandora’s Box

  9 March 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The following was the ‘New Delhi Skyline’ written by N.C. fifty years ago on March 2, 1965 and published in Mainstream (March 6, 1965). Even after fifty years the relevance of its contents remains undiminished.
  Shastri’s New Torments • Language: Pandora’s Box
  When the Finance Minister rose to present his Budget before the Lok Sabha on the last working day of February, there was premonition that the ill-starred Cabinet headed by Sri Lal Bhahdur Shastri might be in (…)

• Should PM Visit China?

  9 March 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Full marks to the arrogance of China! It summons the Indian envoy at Beijing and conveys its displeasure over the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Arunachal Pradesh. The territory is part of India and was never claimed by China till some years ago when it attained the military prowess worth the name.
  Beijing told our ambassador Ashok Kantha that Modi’s visit “undermined China’s territorial sovereignty right and interests”. Not long ago, Beijing had begun stapling visas of the (…)

• Massacres Recoiled in Assam: Adivasis this Time

  9 March 2015

  by Nazimuddin Siddique
  In a series of violence in Assam the latest deadly massacre came in the fateful evening of December 23, 2014 when Bodo militants unleashed their barbarism through the barrels of sophisticated AK series weapons upon the marginalised Adivasi community of the State. The brutality on unarmed villagers was unleashed in Kokrajhar, Chirang, Udalguri and Sonitpur districts of Assam within the span of a few hours. The rampage occurred largely along the northern border of the (…)

• Beti Bachao needs Radicalism rather than Rhetoric

  9 March 2015

  WOMEN’S WORLD
  by Neetu Choudhary
  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign on ‘beti bachao, beti padhao’ is merely a top-up on numerous scattered schemes that already exist in the name of women’s welfare or development. Though the schemes in themselves need not be questioned given the gender-insensitive country that we are, yet an introspection must not be ruled out. We must ask ourselves: ‘do we really need these schemes, which are nothing more than a mask over our inability to respond to (…)

• Beti Bachao: Patients’ Envy Doctors’ Pride

  9 March 2015

  by Harikrishnan B., Navneet Sharma and Pradeep Nair
  The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has miles to go before he sleeps, especially when he is such a slow walker. As Chief Minister of Gujarat for more than a decade, he could not reach out to Vapi which is only 200 miles away from Gandhinagar. The recent Census of India (2011) shows Vapi with the lowest sex ratio with 734 women per 1000 men. The ‘ideal’ Gujarati pride finds a pitiable 12th position in the States’ ranking list according to (…)

• Depoliticising People’s Protests

  9 March 2015, by Suranjita Ray

  The idea and practice of democracy has always remained a subject of political negotiation, revision and reinvention. Its history is inseparable from the history of people’s assertions, protests, struggles, and increased consciousness of rights and liberation. Though the nature and issues raised by people’s protests and social movements are not free from controversies and internal differences, they remain an important force of socio-economic and political transfor-mations in society. (…)

• Russia: Boris Nemtsov’s Murder and Demonisation of Putin

  9 March 2015, by Arun Mohanty

  Boris Nemtsov, one of Russia’s most flam-boyant and exotic liberal Opposition leaders and Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin’s one-time favourite and heir-apparent, was shot dead on February 28 night at a stone’s throw from Moscow’s iconic Red Square behind the Kremlin walls. Nemtosov was returning home at midnight walking with his 23-year-old female friend, Anna Duritskaya, a model from Ukraine, after having dinner with her in a restaurant situated in the famous departmental store, GUM. (…)

• Fukuyama’s Journey since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

  9 March 2015

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Nirupam Hazra
  Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama; Publisher: Profile Books, New Delhi; 2014; price: Rs 699; pages: 658
  It is difficult to put Francis Fukuyama in a single category—a philosopher or a historian or a political thinker. In his first book, The End of History and the Last Man (an expanded version of his 1989 essay published in The National Interest), Fukuyama argued that (…)

• A Letter to Friends on a Matter of Concern

  9 March 2015, by Chaman Lal

  Dear Friends,
  Perhaps I should not address you like this, yet feeling concerned about media reports, which I wish to be proved false, about internal bickerings in the AAP, I am doing so.
  The Indian society is going through very hard times, despite the AAP’s spectacular victory in Delhi Assembly. The AAP brought some hope in fighting these hard times and reviving the spirit of the freedom struggle days against British colonialism. Today’s neo-colonial, neo-imperial system is much worse (…)

• Women’s Day

  9 March 2015, by Badri Raina

  Would it not be nice if, in fact, You did not set aside that one Charitable day to propitiate us, But simply, through the year, Internalised our human status. Would it not be nice if you Understood how, lacking us, Your brood would have no Existence, not to speak of Swagger, muscle, puissance. Would it not be nice if, in fact, You came alive to the infinite Beauty of our complimentarity, Finding fulfilment and grace In our answering disparity. Would it not be (…)