Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Modi, Nehru and the Palestine Issue

  8 August 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  India’s forthright, unambiguous statement in the UN forums identifying itself with the anguish and anger of the world community over Israel’s war crimes in Gaza has evoked a range of strange responses in the country. Those who ought to have warmly commended the Narendra Modi Government—the Congress party, Left parties, Indian Union Muslim League [IUML] and Samajwadi Party—have ducked, while the Friends of Israel [FOI] cry murder.
  Ironically, both constituencies face a predicament. For the (…)

• Importance of being an Extremist

  8 August 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  Amit Shah is a new word in the Sangh Parivar jargon. It means loyalty. Shah is, without any doubt, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Man Friday. But what differentiates him from others is the blind faith he has in his master, Modi. Amit Shah was given the task to polarise the biggest State of Uttar Pradesh. He won the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 71 seats out of 80 in the Lok Sabha in the recent elections.
  Modi has now put Shah at the head of the BJP to spread the same divisive ideas, (…)

• A Look at Choice of Words in our Media

  8 August 2014

  by Anil Chamadia
  MEDIA
  The Indian Express, the leading English language daily, published a news report on the front page of its June 30, 2014 issue with the following heading, “Delhi’s RTI ‘terrorist’ hunting victims on a bike, with cameramen in tow”. Shalini Narayan in her report has described a man’s torturous behaviour with people around him. The man, one Anil Dutt Sharma, has been termed as an anti-social and a ‘terrorist’. The reporter lists a number of cases wherein Sharma is (…)

• India-France Cooperation: Towards Enhanced Bilateral Partnership

  8 August 2014, by Bharti Chhibber

  The recent visit of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to India may not have resulted in clinching of the Rafale jet deal which is being negotiated since January 2012 but it surely is an important step in enhanced bilateral partnership between the two countries. If the agreement materialises in the future the induction of Rafale fighter jets is expected to bolster the ‘air dominance’ doctrine of the Indian Air Force. The deal involves technology-sharing and the production of most of the (…)

• On Goan Migration

  8 August 2014, by Eduardo Faleiro

  Sometime ago, I visited several villages and towns in the neighbouring districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka to meet people of Goan origin settled there. During the 16th and 17th centuries thousands of Goans, both Hindus and Christians, left Goa to escape religious and cultural persecution. In Goa, during that period, all possible obstacles were imposed on the practice of the local religions. Moreover, converts to Christianity could not easily change their deep-rooted Indian way of life. (…)

• Tribal Identity and Callous Bureaucracy: Violation of Centre’s Notification of 2003

  8 August 2014, by Amarendra Kishore

  In the third decade of the 20th century, the much popular iron-smelter community of Agaria was brought by the Britons from their ancestral land (name unknown) to Senduria village, a dusky hamlet in district Garwa of Jharkhand, to work in the local limestone pit. They were enduringly shifted there but their ancestral land (now under a reserved forest area where any activity is restricted) vanished forever; from that area they once used to obtain iron from hematite stone. Now the scions of (…)

• Socialism — What, Why, How?

  8 August 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  I - Introduction
  “I am convinced that there is only one way to eliminate these great evils (of capitalism), namely, through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented towards social goals....”
  It was a long time ago—65 years to be precise—when Albert Einstein wrote these words with much faith and hope. Unfortunately this optimism could not be maintained as by and large socialism could not be implemented in ways that could (…)

• The Unconquerable Spirit of 1942

  8 August 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  August 9 this year marks the 72nd anniversary of the ‘Quit India‘ movement also known as the August Revolution. On this occasion we reproduce the piece that N.C. wrote in Mainstream on the golden jubilee of the movement in August 1992.
  Agrateful nation is celebrating the golden jubilee of the ‘Quit India’ movement which, fifty years ago, marked the final glorious phase of our freedom struggle.
  With Gandhiji‘s clarion call of ‘Do or Die’, it was undoubtedly the most (…)

• Can Our Country have “Achhe Din” under Modi’s Government?

  8 August 2014

  COMMUNICATION
  After the victory of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014—in which fairness was the main casualty—and the formation of Modi’s government, the BJP had loudly proclaimed that now the country would have achhe din or good days and there will emerge a new era in which there will be no room for dearness or mehangai, skyrocketing prices will disappear, the Indian economy will become strong and the policies of the UPA Government, which were anti-people, would be buried.
  But (…)

• American Oligarchs

  8 August 2014, by Eddie J Girdner

  REVIEW ARTICLE
  Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman; Grand Central Publishing, New York; 2014; pages: 424.
  “He who has no shame owns the whole world.” —Cypriot proverb
  In his recent notable book, Capital in the Twentyfirst Century, Thomas Piketty has documented how America is becoming a rentier society like France in the late nineteenth century. Inequality of wealth in 2010 in America showed that the top one (…)