Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Coalition Politics and Impending Poll

  23 March 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The dragging-on of the Presidential talks with leaders of different political parties has no doubt exasperated the patience of the average citizen as much as the President himself. What has been found is that no political formation worth the name has been able to muster sufficient support to ensure a majority in the Lok Sabha.
  What we have to thank our stars about is the fact that the entire game of elections is played within the four corners of the Constitution (…)

• On Special Status

  23 March 2014, by Eduardo Faleiro

  A Resolution of the Goa Legislative Assembly and a Memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister last year seek special status for Goa under Article 371 of the Constitution of India. This special status is sought on two grounds. As a result of large-scale purchase of land by persons from outside Goa, including foreigners, the average Goan cannot afford a house or land in Goa. Furthermore, there is large-scale migra-tion into the State which may destroy Goa’s id-entity.
  The special status (…)

• The Squabble over Tickets carries a Tale: Our Politicians will go on Plundering

  23 March 2014, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  How passionate are our politicians about serving the nation! The scramble for tickets is always a feature of elections. But never have we witnessed the huddle and the muddle, the tumult and the chaos we see in the present rush to get into Parliament. There is nothing in this free-for-all to distinguish one party from another or one ticket-seeker from another. No one has an identifying ideology or principle. All are bound by a common thread: the greed for power. All are (…)

• Maoist Strike in Election Season

  15 March 2014, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  It’s election season now and the selection of candidates is giving headaches to the leaderships of all the major political parties including and notably the BJP. The Modi juggernaut is moving ahead across the country no doubt, but the seats of the supreme leaders of the party, BJP President Rajnath Singh and prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi, have yet to be finalised. Problems have reportedly mounted in the higher echelons of the party’s decision-making apparatus with (…)

• An Indian General Election Like No Other

  15 March 2014, by Badri Raina

  Look at it this way: the anti-colonial Indian national movement, a far more multi-faceted conjuncture than is sometimes propagated, did yield, even among its propertied leaderships, a genuine socialist fervour to spread the fruits of post-colonial reconstruction as widely as new class interests and ingrained regressive social histories would allow. This historical dynamic necessitated assigning a leading role to the state, and placing the “commanding heights” of the economy in public (…)

• This is Not Just about Cheering for the ‘Wrong’ Cricket Team

  15 March 2014

  The following is a press release issued an March 12, 2014 on behalf of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy by PIPFPD, India
  by Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal and Asha Hans, co-chairpersons, PIPFPD India Chapter.
  The recent case of charges of sedition, spreading enmity and mischief imposed on some students from Kashmir at the Swami Vivekanand Subharti University, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and their expulsion from this University after they cheered for Pakistan post-a cricket (…)

• Pot Calling Kettle Black

  15 March 2014, by Kuldip Nayar

  Foreign rulers always claim that their regimen is benign and helps the subjects. The British are no exception. They say the same thing about their governance. But if their atrocities were to be enumerated, the record would be brutal. The credit for not defaming the British for their 150-year rule goes to the Indians who have taken the past in their stride and have even joined the Commonwealth with the Queen as the symbol of unity.
  Still the British have never said or written a good word (…)

• The Message from Kiev

  15 March 2014, by Uttam Sen

  Is Ukraine sending the world any fresh messages? There could be several. Beginning with the innocuous yet significant information provided by the BBC, the “tough” posturing attributed to important sources needed to be taken guardedly because cash-strapped Euro-peans would not easily annoy billionaire Russian migrants, given their sensitivities on Mother Russia (built on 9th century Kiev!) and financial contributions to their countries of adoption. Russia’s trade with Europe is also well (…)

• Getting Ready for Lok Sabha Poll

  15 March 2014, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  From N.C.’s Writings
  The dramatic change-over of the government in Uttar Pradesh marks a veritable turning-point in our present-day politics. The ouster of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the installation of Mayawati in his place heralds the beginning of the season of prepartions for the Lok Sabha poll. The whole episode—which was in the nature of a coup—reflects the moves and counter-moves on the part of all the major parties in the coming parliamentary elections. If the breaking up of the SP-BSP (…)

• "Franchising" and "Profit" in Distance Education

  15 March 2014

  by Sadhan Mukherjee
  The UGC had put up a set of draft regulations on distance education in its website on December 19, 2013 seeking comments thereon by January 3, 2014. It has now reportedly finalised the same but did not put these up on the website. The regulations, as made known in draft, were rigid, regressive and divorced from present-day reality; and had the hallmark of a typical bureaucratic wooden-headedness. The UGC, it seems, is bent upon overthrowing all that has been achieved so (…)