Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Modi’s Japan Visit and Reactions in the Chinese Media

  24 October 2014, by Gunjan Singh

  The interactions between India and China are viewed with a very keen interest by the international community. The domestic politics and leadership transitions in these countries are also events of great interest for the world. India and China both have witnessed leadership changes in the last two years. Both the respective leaders—Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chinese President, Xi Jinping—are trying to formulate their respect foreign policy agenda’s and directions. Both these leaders (…)

• Afghanistan Faces Uncertain Future

  24 October 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  Afghanistan has witnessed two major events in the most recent weeks. One is the assumption of office by Ashraf Ghani as the next President of the country, succeeding Hamid Karzai. The second has been the signing of the two “back-to-back” security pacts between Afghanistan on the one hand and the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] on the other.
  Both developments are of historical importance in their own ways. Ghani’s presidency signifies a rare peaceful (…)

• Secular Forces at Crossroads

  24 October 2014

  by Arun Srivastava
  The secular alliance of the RJD, JD(U) and Congress no doubt has checkmated the BJP’s juggernaut in Bihar and managed to send a strong message to Narendra Modi that his efforts to work out a new kind of social engineering could not match the nuances of the Mandal philosophy and succeed in the existing socio-political condition. The superstructure of Modi’s social engineering was not based on some strong fundamentals. What is significant for Nitish’s secular alliance is (…)

• Was Pakistan testing Modi? ISI’s Foolishness subverts Collective Progress awaiting South Asia

  24 October 2014

  IMPRESSIONS
  Suddenly reality is catching up with Narendra Modi and India. We are learning that showmanship can go thus far and no further. The first hint came when the Chinese President’s visit coincided with stepped-up Chinese incursions in Ladakh. The message was that China’s Big Brother posture in Asia was not negotiable and all the Ahmedabad hoopla was just hoopla. Then, so soon after the Pakistani Prime Minister’s attendance at Modi’s swearing-in, a war-like crisis developed along the (…)

• General Elections 2014 and the Changing Political Equation in Bengal

  24 October 2014

  by Nirupam Hazra
  The 2014 election results in the State of West Bengal clearly show the dominance of the ruling Trinamul Congress as it has won thirtyfour out of fortytwo seats. Its main Opposition, the Left Front, is reduced to only two seats while the Congress and BJP managed to get only four and two seats respectively. But a deeper analysis of the result points towards a changing power equation in the political landscape of Bengal.
  The electoral battle in Bengal has been mostly a (…)

• Parliamentary Elections and Gorkhaland: Message from Darjeeling

  24 October 2014, by Swatahsiddha Sarkar

  The exposure of the Darjeeling hills towards the tit-bits of electoral politics can be traced back to 1937, the year when the first-ever elections in the hills took place. According to the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, the Darjeeling hill region was declared as a ‘partially excluded area’ and allotted one member to be elected to the Provincial Legislature of the then Bengal. Again in 1946 the political enthusiasm registered by the people and hill leaders regarding the (…)

• Education Perspective

  24 October 2014

  by Sadhan Mukherjee
  Have our students stopped dreaming or thinking big? Don’t they feel that in the rapidly advancing modern world they have no place near the top? Conversely, why are we not trying to educate them for the future, their own and that of the country? Will the new dispensation in the governance of the country now push the country back to the gurukul tradition or advance with modern, need-based education? These are not rhetorical issues but comprise a serious inquiry.
  In the (…)

• Towards a New Education Policy

  24 October 2014

  by Murzban Jal
  All educational work in the field in the Soviet Republic of Workers and Peasants, in the field of political education in general and in the field of art in particular, should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat for the successful achievement of the aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the overthrow of the bourgeois, the abolition of all classes, and the elimination of all forms of exploitation of man by man. V.I. Lenin (…)

• Welcome Decision, Disconcerting Incidents

  20 October 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  Last week a fervent appeal was made in these columns to de-escalate the rising tensions along the India-Pakistan border.
  The ceasefire violations and firing on the LoC and international border in J&K have gradually declined although these can again recur with serious consequences in the days ahead.
  However, what is of utmost significance is that last Friday (October 10) the Nobel Peace Committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 to Kailash Satyarthi of India (…)

• Notes on the Leader

  20 October 2014, by Mukul Dube

  Since the results of the general election were declared, I have been in a state of unbelief. The country now has at its head a man who has widely been called a mass murderer, who likened a massacre of Muslim citizens to the accidental death of a “kutte ka bachcha”, who delights in preening for the cameras holding swords and wearing diverse kinds of head-gear, and whose stated qualification for the top job is a thorax whose circumference is 142 centimetres.
  Modi may well be described as a (…)