Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• S 301: Keeping Alive Gunboat Diplomacy

  14 June 2014

  by Rohini Pandurangi
  The recent decision of the United States (US) to continue to keep India in the ‘priority watch list’ thereby refraining from designating it as a ‘priority foreign country’ saves India from having to do another firefighting, at least for the time being. The sudden and unexpected decision of the EU to ban imports of Alphonso mangoes and four other vegetables from India has given the Commerce Ministry enough work to do. Though the actions of the US are unilateral and (…)

• 2014 General Elections marked a Watershed in India’s Post-independence Political History

  14 June 2014, by P R Dubhashi

  For the first time a non-Congress political party, the BJP, was able to get an absolute majority on its own in Parliament. The BJP had in the past—first for 13 days, then for 13 months, and later for a full term—formed governments but those were in alliance with a multiplicity of regional parties (some 24). The present victory is unprecedented. It has given the opportunity to the BJP to form a government without depen-dence on its allies some of whom proved unreliable.
  Reflecting on the (…)

• Dissecting the Rout of the Congress

  14 June 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  This is not the first time that the Congress has been decimated, getting only 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The party met more or less a similar fate in the 1977 election held after the Emergency. Mrs Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Emergency, and her extra-constitutional son, Sanjay Gandhi, too lost in the polls. Yet the Congress retained the three southern States—Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Even the overall tally was around 150. It was, indeed, a defeat but not a rout (…)

• Threat to Syria Averted

  14 June 2014, by Harish Chandola

  This piece was sent before the election to Syria’s presidency.
  President Bashar Assad of Syria will soon be seeking a new term of office. He appears to have overcome the threat to his regime from military intervention from the United States, Britain and France. The threat to it posed by foreign-supported Sunni jihadists, who have been waging an armed struggle to oust him since 2011, is diminishing. It caused much devastation, killed thousands and rendered millions as refugees, now living (…)

• Rapes, Gang-rapes, Prostitution

  14 June 2014, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  Rapes and gang-rapes! Sexual maniacs on the prowl! Perversion hitting all possible quarters—right from the rural to the urban belts, from the top brass to the lowest rung!
  What’s shocking is this accompanying factor—in the Badaun gang-rape-cum-murder of the two minors girls, cops are more than involved. The very ‘protector’ turns your rapist! And to top it all, there is politics even in this horrible mess. Every possible political outfit is there to demolish Akhilesh Yadav’s (…)

• India and Sri Lanka: Emerging Parallels

  14 June 2014, by Apratim Mukarji

  As the dust over the 2014 Lok Sabha elections settles down and the stock-taking exercise comes to an end, a question that emerges is if for the first time in republican India the Muslim community accounting for as much as 14.6 per cent of the total population (2011 Census) has begun to lose its relevance to the core identity of the Indian polity.
  It would be rash and inadvisable to accept this assessment within a few days of thepublication of the election results, constitution of the new (…)

• Contours of China Crisis

  14 June 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  Twentyfive years ago, N.C. had left for China when the Tiananmen bloodbath took place on June 4, 1989. Apart from his despatches which appeared in The Times of India on the tragedy that befell that great country at that time, he also wrote this detailed piece which was published in Mainstream (June 17, 1989). This was an enlarged version of an article in The Times of India (June 12, 1989).
  The contours of the emerging set-up in China are still very blurred as the (…)

• Remembering Tiananmen

  14 June 2014

  No miracle will ever clean
  The memory, bestial and obscene,
  Of those who, having fouled their trust,
  Grew warped with dread and powerlust—
  And ordered fire on the square,
  On unarmed people everywhere,
  Brave people seeking to be free
  Of rottenness, of tyranny.
  —Vikram Seth
  [This poem was written twentyfive years ago and published in The Times of India on June 6, 1989. It is being reproduced—courtesy The Times of India—in memory of the Tiananmen martyrs.]

• On C. Rajeswara Rao’s birth centenary

  14 June 2014
  • C. Rajeswara Rao, As I Knew Him by A.B. Bardhan
  • Com CR: A Fearless Warrior of Indian Revolution by P.K. Balakrishnan

• Left Forces should Awake now before it is Too Late

  14 June 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  communication
  Despite all the recent setbacks suffered by the Left forces, in the general elections and before this, two facts cannot be denied. Firstly, it is the politics of the rights of the poor, the politics of equality and justice, which is the most relevant politics particularly in India’s context. As this is also the defining feature of the Left forces, so these forces remain very relevant. Secondly, keeping in mind the fact that the majority of India’s people cannot even access (…)