Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Beware of the Coming Dangers of New Trade Agreements TTP and TTIP

  13 September 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  COMMUNICATION
  Although the under-negotiation trade treaties TTP and TTIP do not involve India directly (at least not yet) their combined impact on the world economy is likely to be so great that all countries have to watch carefully for the adverse effects.
  The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) is led by the USA and includes Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunie. It has been under negotiation for about four years.
  The (…)

• First Hundred Days of Modi Government

  6 September 2014

  POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
  The most striking feature of the first hundred days of the Modi Government that stands out in sharp relief is that the main plank of his election campaign—development—has taken a back seat while the RSS agenda, which Modi never highlighted in his campaign, is getting top priority partly of the government but mainly of his party, the BJP. The dissolution of the Planning Commission exposes Modi’s avowed commitment to development. The other big promise that he made was to (…)

• Tribute: Remembering Bipan Chandra

  6 September 2014

  by Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee
  Professor Bipan Chandra, affectionately called Bipan by his students and friends, legendary teacher, scholar and activist, passed away peacefully in his sleep on the morning of August 30, 2014 at his residence at the National Media Centre in Gurgaon, where he had moved since his retirement from the Jawaharlal Nehru University more than twenty years ago. As news spread of his demise, his house was flooded by former students, colleagues, neighbours, (…)

• Planning in a Modern Economy: Is its Role Over in India?

  6 September 2014, by Arun Kumar

  The Independence Day speech of the PM announced that the Planning Commission, set up in 1950, would be closed. Given that this institution has played a central role in the way the government functioned in India, does this announcement presage a major institutional change in governance? A new body/think-tank is supposed to replace this institution. Would this proposed institution essentially do what the Planning Commission did but under a different name and rubric? One may also ask whether in (…)

• Early Days of Planning : P.C. Mahalanobis

  6 September 2014, by Ashok Mitra

  Ideology unites, bringing like-minded people under a common sky. But ideology also divides: friends, who have enjoyed one another’s company for long years during their adolescence and early youth, attending music, poetry and dance recitals together, watched together with avidity avant-garde films and had literary taste which differed only slightly from one another’s, suddenly realised from a chance happening that their political and economic points of view were sharply at variance. This is (…)

• Scrapping of Planning Commission isn’t about Economics so much as BJP’s Anti-Nehruvianism

  6 September 2014

  by Rajrishi Singhal
  when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his maiden Independence Day speech on August 15, one crisp announcement stood out amidst the torrent of usual homilies: he wanted to shut the Planning Commission down.
  The Planning Commission is a government body that formulates five-year economic plans, among other things. What Modi will replace it with is still not clear. But he was unequivocal about his decision: “We will replace the Planning Commission with a new institution (…)

• FDI in Defence: Missing the Reality

  6 September 2014

  by Vishnu Bhagwat
  The overblown hype over the increased FDI ceilings in the defence sector, touting that India would become a major arms exporter from currently being the top importer in the world, is unrealistic. The exaggerated expectations that by increasing the FDI limits from the current 26 per cent to 49 per cent for foreign original equipment manufacturers will ensure rapid transfer of technology and setting up of vast manufacturing facilities for India’s armed forces as well as for (…)

• Congress Still Cannot look beyond the Dynasty, nor BJP beyond Sectarian Politics

  6 September 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  It may seem too early, but the contours of the next general election are beginning to take shape. It will be the usual politics, played the usual dismal way. Those who saw in Narendra Modi’s victory a turning-point in history may have to revise their views. The size of its triumph had surprised the BJP just as the extent of its defeat had shocked the Congress. It was a message for the winner to try and earn the trust of all, and for the loser to introspect and change its ways. (…)

• Invasion of Educational Universe by ‘Economics’: A Civilisational Casualty?

  6 September 2014, by Arup Maharatna

  Abstract
  In the late 1950s there emerged (somewhat abruptly) a constricted one-dimensional economic interpretation of the role and purpose (hence the philosophy) of education largely from the standpoint of the concepts, categories and methodology of mainstream (neo-classical) economics. This soon culminated into the foundation of a new branch of economic discourse/inquiry, namely, economics of education, which eventually weakened the pre-existing humanistic vision and liberal view of (…)

• Tribute: Balraj Puri

  6 September 2014, by Badri Raina

  As Bipan Chandra (86) was, and will remain, to the history of anti-colonialism and communalism in India, Balraj Puri (86) was, and will remain, to the history of anti-feudalism and non-discriminatory justice in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. And both, primarily, were, and will remain, untiring and undetered voices on behalf of democracy, where democracy is not understood merely as the periodic ritual of a peaceful governmental change but as an idea inseparable from the raison d‘etre of (…)