Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Chicken-heart

  26 July 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The unprovoked shooting down of an Iranian civilian airbus by the US warships in the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf on July 3 killing nearly 300 innocent lives, has shocked the world public.
  In a pathetic bid to cover up this ghastly crime by the American armada, President Reagan called it “a terrible human tragedy” but sought to justify it by saying that it was “a proper defensive action” by the US Navy. Through a series of false insinuations, the (…)

• On the Current Contradictions of Global Capitalism

  26 July 2014, by Eddie J Girdner

  BOOK REVIEW
  Capital in the Twentyfirst Century by Thomas Piketty; Harvard University Press, London; 2014.
  This important book is in the tradition of the classical political economy of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx. It is based upon fifteen years of research by the author, a French economist, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics.
  In recent decades, too much of economics has been based upon abstract theory and mathe-matical modelling without looking at the trajectory of (…)

• Aftermath of Parliamentary Elections 2014: Fears and Uncertainties may Revive Call for Separate Electorate

  26 July 2014, by A K Biswas

  The outcome of the 16th parliamentary elections (2014) has thrown up intractable surprises, if not enigma, defying understanding and inter-pretation. Two prominent players—Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)—strangely stand wiped out from the Indian Parliament. The former is a national and the latter a regional party, though both have the record and experience of holding the reins of power—the BSP in Uttar Pradesh and DMK in Tamil Nadu. In UP, the Bharatiya Janata (…)

• Vidya Munsi Is No More

  26 July 2014

  Vidya Munsi breathed her last at the age of 95 in the morning of July 7 at Kolkata. She was not only a leading figure in the Indian women’s movement but also one of the country’s veteran journalists. She was indeed the first woman journalist in Kolkata.
  Born in a Gujarati family deeply influenced by Gandhism in Bombay on December 5, 1919, Vidya Kanuga was a brilliant student. She stood first among girl students and third in the general category in the Matriculation exami-nation and joined (…)

• Accolades Abroad, Darkness at Home

  20 July 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  In his first major global outing at Fortaleza, Brazil to attend the BRICS Summit, the country’s new PM Narendra Modi has been able to successfully project India’s international image while confidently establishing himself as an important player in the multilateral fora. India was given the presidency of the just set up New Development Bank of the organisation that is to be headquartered in Shanghai. This was the product of close Sino-Russian coordination during the negotiations (…)

• FDI in Defence: Some Questions

  20 July 2014, by Barun Das Gupta

  Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech has said that his government was raising the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) cap in Defence from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. (He is also the Defence Minister.) Worrying as this piece of information is, what is more worrying is that he has not indicated which specific sectors in defence production will be thrown open to FDI and Foreign Technological Participation (FTP). The people have a right to know where exactly foreign manufacturers (…)

• The Fiscal Game 2014 - 15

  20 July 2014, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  Do the slew of Budget proposals tell a coherent story with its main characters and their roles defining their relativities vis-à-vis each other and in the process unravel the overall plot and the moral of the story? With an over-advertised play, the compulsion to satisfy everyone in the audience is surely pressing but the Drama Company, the actors, the story-writers, the financiers and so on, that is, each constituency, may tend to lend their hand in the actual performance. So the remaining (…)

• A Budget for Hindu Rashtra or Secular India?

  20 July 2014

  by Arun Srivastava
  Impassioned election speeches of Narendra Modi to create a Congress-Mukt Bharat (an India Free of the Congress) was not aimed only at changing the political system and power structure of the country, it also aimed to exhort the people, the policy-makers, the bureaucrats to move away from the Nehruvian model of politics and economic practices. Modi politically succeeded in liberating the country of the Congress, but the presentation of the first Budget of the Modi (…)

• A Book-keeper’s Exercise

  20 July 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  It’s like a political rope trick, Chidambaram’s maiden Budget as the Finance Minister of the United Front Government. Everyone from V.P. Singh and Somnath Chatterjee to the captains of the corporate giants have praised it and the Finance Minister coiuld go home in peace, as he has been anointed by the media as “Thiruvallu-var’s Disciple”. Indeed a long way that the young politician has travelled from the day when he promptly quit as the Commerce Minister to avoid being (…)

• Modi’s 50 Days in Office

  20 July 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  If the first 50-odd day of rule by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is any guide, it is a Rightist Government which has taken over India. The Nehruvian ideology which tilts towards the Left has been jettisoned. Once again, free enterprise and unencumbered trade will motivate the people.
  This is a turnaround from the policies that has guided the nation so far. The public sector will shrink and the rich will expand their area of influence and operation. This is the logical consequence of a free (…)