Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Loss of an Ideological Battle

  14 June 2014, by Ambrose Pinto

  As people committed to Centrist politics, the victory of the BJP in the parliamentary elections has saddened many of us. That in no way means that we are making a case for the existing Congress. Not many tears are shed for the defeat of the Congress. The Congress surely deserved what it got, 44 seats in a House of 543, the lowest ever. The party can only reap what it had sown. Not only scams and scandals during the UPA regime, there was also plenty of arrogance besides the total betrayal of (…)

• The Left Debacle In Lok Sabha 2014: A Critical Overview

  14 June 2014

  by Amrita Datta
  Marx was right—history does repeat itself, first as tragedy, and then as farce. The CPI-M’s unsettling performance in the Lok Sabha Election 2009 was tragedy impending; premonition was overt that the party had entered the stage of organisational and ideological crises which, if not addressed immediately, would take it down to the ultimate abyss. However, no change happened, neither in the perspective of the party leaders, nor in their internal party organisation; and the (…)

• Handloom: An Endangered Industry

  14 June 2014

  book review
  by Imtiaz Ahmad Ansari
  Entangled Yarns: Banaras Weavers and Social Crisis by Vasanthi Raman; Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; 2013; pp. X+126 (Hardcover).
  The book Entangled Yarns: Banaras Weavers and Social Crisis by Vasanthi Raman deals with the various dimensions of the weaving industry in Banaras and the people associated with it. The book is a sequel to her previous book, titled Warp and the Weft: Community and Gender Identity Among Banaras Weavers, (…)

• Questions About New Government’s Policies

  14 June 2014, by Bharat Dogra

  As India’s new government speeds up the implementation of a selective agenda, several questions need to be raised about the direction and content of new policy decisions and likely decisions. Let’s pick up the newspapers of just one day (May 30) to see the direction of the new government’s decisions. (All news reports cited below are from Delhi editions of newspapers dated May 30.)
  ‘Sushma, Kerry discuss $500 billion target for trade,’ says a headline in The Hindu. This report said: (…)

• More Thefts of Photos and Text

  14 June 2014, by Mukul Dube

  At http://www.thehoot.org/web/Stealingphotos/6372-1-1-17-true.html I wrote about how Inquilab and Madhyamam used, without my knowledge and without crediting me, photographs taken by me. Other thieves have crawled out of the wood-work in the eighteen months since then.
  In April 2013 I found that HardNews had used a photo I had taken of an ANHAD function, without my knowledge or permission and without naming me on the page. The page where the photo appeared—http://www.hard (…)

• Need for Vigilance

  9 June 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  With the elections to the 16th Lok Sabha having pronounced a decisive verdict, the Lower House of Parliament presents a scene completely different from the one witnessed in the previous Lok Sabha. As the first session of this Lok Sabha is formally inaugurated after a day’s adjournment on June 4 due to sitting member and Union Minister for Rural Develoment Gopinath Munde’s tragic demise in a road accident in the Capital, this becomes starkly visible. While the Congress has been (…)

• South Asia on Cusp of Strategic Realignment?

  9 June 2014, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The South Asian region seems ripe for a strategic realignment, although no one cares to talk about it openly. The Russian report to the effect that Moscow is ending its self-imposed arms embargo on Pakistan amounts to a signal that the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of the region are shifting.
  If the report is true—RIA Novosti is an official news agency—this is further confirmation that India and Russia are drifting apart. From a stance of benign neglect of the relationship in the (…)

• On Thirtieth Anniversary of ‘Operation Bluestar’: Some Thoughts on the Aftermath of the Operation

  9 June 2014, by Nandita Haksar

  A few days after ‘Operation Bluestar’ I was in the Amritsar home of Sardar Gursharan Singh, the legendary theatre personality. He had shown tremendous courage by publicly criticising the Punjab militants and even enacted plays in Bhindranwale’s village raising questions about the Khalistani movement.
  We were in the midst of a discussion when a very agitated young Sardar walked in. He said he had heard a Supreme Court lawyer was visiting and he wanted to know whether the lawyer could help (…)

• Regional Disparities, Smaller States and Statehood for Telangana

  9 June 2014

  http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1213.html

• Statehood for Telangana: The Current Stalemate

  9 June 2014