Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Parties on Trial

  1 March 2015, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  By the time these lines reach the reader, the final picture of electoral contests and poll alliances will be clear. After six weeks of hectic parleys and secret confabulations, political parties have at last taken their positions for the most crucial electoral battle in the history of Indian democracy.
  The contours of political alignment have never been in doubt. On the one side could be seen the forces of reaction making desperate attempts to come to an (…)

• After all, it’s a Game

  1 March 2015, by Kuldip Nayar

  Suppose India had lost the World Cup cricket match against Pakistan at Adelaide, the reaction among its people would have been that of disappointment and remorse. But I do not think that they would have initiated scuffles with the Pakistani spectators. The Indians would not have destroyed television sets as some did in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan. Of course, there would have been a sense of humiliation, but it would not have poured on to the streets in the shape of fracas or (…)

• Ukraine: Russia Won’t Blink

  1 March 2015, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The Russian-American history is replete with instances where Washington walked away triumphalist at the end of a standoff while Moscow retired hanging its head low. Let us dip into the past for a minute. Remember the incident at Pristina airport in June 1999 when Russian forces took over the area ahead of a NATO deployment, leading to a tense stand-off and had to vacate eventually?
  Or, remember the hushed-up incident in Afghanistan when Moscow landed 12 huge Ilyushin-76 aircraft with (…)

• A Personal Debt Recalled On Republic Day

  1 March 2015, by S G Vombatkere

  COMMUNICATION
  On the 65th anniversary of our Republic Day, I remembered my father and recalled our family’s debt to the Constitution of India and the Supreme Court of India. To elaborate, my father, Vombatkere Gurunandan Row [better known as V.G. Row, Barrister-at-Law (04.04.1907 to 05.04.1980)], was the General Secretary of the “People’s Education Society” registered in November 1947, which had, for its objects, (a) to encourage, promote, diffuse and popularise useful knowledge in all (…)

• Saffronisation of Education: Questioning The Legitimacy Of An Education That Is Partial

  1 March 2015

  by Vikash Sharma and Ananya Pathak
  The debate on the secularisation of education has been one that has being going on for a long time, the need to free education from the clutches of religious dogma or fundamentalist tendencies is not a new one. In fact, it can be stretched back to the enlightenment era in the Western world, where the need to free education from the domination of the church and a movement towards the rational, scientific temper as opposed to a dogmatic, orthodox (…)

• Modi’s "Make in India"

  1 March 2015, by Girish Mishra

  Before ascending the throne of Delhi, to lure the young voters, Modi had propagated the virtues of FDI (foreign direct investment). He claimed that once he comes to power, there would be a long queue of the foreigners ready to invest in India. Till then the policies of the Nehru-Indira era were preventing them from entering India. Once they start investing in India, new job opportunities would arise and there would be no young unemployed people and they would get enough money to buy flats (…)

• Mother Teresa

  1 March 2015, by Badri Raina

  I am no Christian, dear departed Mother of millions whose persuasions Mattered as little to you as seasons Of the year, or the political weather Of the day, and who worried little That you had a religion which was Not their own, finding healing and calm Past religions and denominations Beneath touch of your loving palm, And in the fathomless suffering In your eyes; I am no Christian, but Now that a well-fed man in khaki Shorts who marches to Mussolini-military Drum, pretending priest of (…)

• Modi on the Backfoot

  23 February 2015, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  The Delhi Assembly election results last week continue to impact on both the party and the Union Government. Had the BJP leadership not been shamed by the all-pervasive rout of the RSS’ principal political outfit in those elections which found the minorities (Muslims, Christians et al.) voting en masse with secular democrats of all hues against the BJP to deliver a massive blow to the latter’s ego, US President Barack Obama’s public warning in New Delhi on January 27 (that (…)

• Trying to cage a Tigress: Roused Civil Society defends Teesta Setalvad against Gujarat Attempt to Humiliate Her

  23 February 2015, by John Dayal

  Around noon on Thursday, February 19, Supreme Court Justices Dipak Misra and Adarsh Kumar Goel extended the stay on the arrest of human rights activist and editor Teesta Setalvad and her husband, Javed Anand, in a case of alleged embezzlement of funds for a “Museum of Resistance” at the Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad, where over 60 people were killed during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots that devastated several towns and villages in Gujarat.
  This pauses for some time a convoluted case that has (…)

• Govind Pansare succumbs to Cowardly Attack

  23 February 2015

  On February 16, motorcycle-borne assailants pumped four bullets on veteran Communist leader Govind Pansare (82) and his wife, Uma (72), when they were returning home from their morning walk in Kolhapur (Maharashta).
  An upright, outspoken and ardent advocate of rationalism, Pansare, the Secretary of the CPI’s State unit, was closely associated with anti-superstition activist, Narendra Dabholkar, who was shot dead while on his morning walk in Pune in August 2013. The attacks on both (…)