Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Does the India-US Bilateral Agreement on Food Security Matter?

  22 November 2014, by Kavaljit Singh

  After months of stalemate, India and the US have agreed to resolve their differences over food stockholdings which would open the way for future implementation of the Trade Facili-tation Agreement (TFA) of the WTO—the biggest trade deal in its entire history.
  On November 13, 2014, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, issued a statement announcing a bilateral agreement with the US. “We are extremely happy that India and the US have successfully resolved (…)

• US shows ‘Pure Evil’ to Russia, is pays back

  22 November 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  by M.K. Bhadrakumar
  The Islamic State [IS] missed its timing by a whisker in making the announcement that it beheaded an American aid worker. The announcement should have been made a day earlier just when the G-20 summit was getting underway and Russian “aggression” in Ukraine was about to be brought to the centre-stage as per the pre-planning by Western countries led by the United States.
  The IS could easily have put President Barack Obama on the horns of a dilemma and his Australian (…)

• Clean Epitome, Loam Pattern

  22 November 2014, by Amna Mirza

  ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness.’ These towering ideas of Mahatma Gandhi have been there since a long time. The recent act of ‘Clean India’ in the form of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ by Prime Minister Modi has captured the imagination of masses towards this dictum.
  It is often pointed out that even in the past such initiatives were taken. However, this time the idea of a polity which is uncontaminated has been ushered in at the governance plank. The era of globalisation, the peculiarities (…)

• AFSPA Requires Another Look

  22 November 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  Two boys have been killed in Kashmir. The incident itself is bizarre. A white-coloured car is mistaken for a similar one which used to scurry the terrorists back and forth. As many as 115 bullets are fired on the car at one go. The only surviving passenger, a boy, tells how the incessant fury did not stop even after the car hit a tree to come to a halt.
  The Army has accepted the mistake. The agility with which it has done so indicates that the gun crazy among them was spotted immediately. (…)

• Who Wants Military for Internal Security?

  22 November 2014, by S G Vombatkere

  Parliament and Government
  The government can function in the interest of people only when there is peace and order in society, persons in power use people-oriented politics, and the rule of law is observed by all sections of society. Maintenance of security, public order, and supplies and services essential to the public, usually together termed “law and order”, is the primary task of the civil adminis-tration. [“Civil administration” is the combi-nation of the powers, roles and functions (…)

• Technology, Life, and Civilisation

  22 November 2014

  by N.V.K. Murthy
  Sometimes I wonder at the changes that science and technology have made in my own life spanning nine decades. I was brought up in a British cantonment town in colonial India. My first memory goes back to the days when we had storm lanterns that used kerosene. I remember the daily chore that my mother had of cleaning three or four such lanterns, filling them with kerosene, and lighting them at dusk. Also, at this time in India, water was mainly drawn from wells, because (…)

• If Britain is responsible for India’s Misery, why is Mass Misery Still Continuing?

  22 November 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  Here’s something that should rivet Narendra Modi’s attention. “Nearly every kind of manufacture or product known to the civilised world—nearly every kind of creation of man’s brain and hand, existing anywhere, and prized either for its utility or beauty—had long, long been produced in India. India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or than any other in Asia. Her textile goods—the fine products of her looms, in cotton, wool, linen and (…)

• Nehru and Minorities

  22 November 2014

  (Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary was befittingly observed by a grateful nation on November 14. On this occasion we continue to publish/reproduce more articles on Nehru.)
  The following contribution from Nehru’s biographer, Dr S. Gopal, was published in Mainstream (November 12, 1988). It is based on the Ansari Memorial Lecture which he delivered at the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi on February 22, 1988. It is now being reproduced here because of its relevance in the present (…)

• The Nehru Daur

  22 November 2014, by Shyam Benegal

  I remember the first time I saw Nehru.
  It was soon after the police action that liberated Hyderabad from Nizam’s rule. I must have been about 12 at the time. A friend of mine and I were walking towards a disused golf course close to my home where we often played cricket. It was early in the morning. Two horsemen came cantering along on their horses. One was General J.N. Chaudhuri who was the Military Governor of Hyderabad at the time and the second was Jawaharlal Nehru. He looked like a (…)

• Betrayal of Nehru Legacy

  22 November 2014, by C.N. Chitta Ranjan

  It is an irony of history that the name of Mahatma Gandhi should within a few years of his martyrdom serve as no more than a mascot for perpetrators and abettors of oppression and exploitation. His name has been mouthed times without number by the very persons who either in office or outside the seats of power have done their best to prevent the realisation of his ideal of social and economic equality. Under the rule of so-called Gandhians over two decades the rich have become richer and (…)