Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• OBC Quota : Letter to Justice Sachar

  14 May 2007, by Syed Shahabuddin

  Dear Justice Rajindar Sachar,
  I have seen your article on the OBC question in The Times of India and subsequently in Mainstream and other papers.
  Because of its wide circulation, I beg your leave to point out a basic flaw in your argument. In case of SCs/STs which are constitutionally recognised Backward Classes, their reservation quota no doubt matches their population, State or national. But, the OBCs, which is only a legal construct, do not fall in the same category. This is the (…)

• Report of an Independent Fact Finding Team on Orissa’s POSCO Project

  14 May 2007, by Bijulal M V, Manshi Asher, Sridevi Panikkar, Sumit Chakravartty

  A strong people’s resistance has been going on in parts of Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa against a steel plant and captive port proposed in the area, since July 2005, a month after the Memorandum of Understanding regarding the project was signed between the Government of Orissa and Pohang Steel Company Limited (POSCO). Things seemed to have come to heat when several platoons of Orissa Military Police were deployed in the area on April 9, six days before the mandatory environmental (…)

• Bangladesh: Khaleda, Hasina and Caretaker Government

  14 May 2007, by Amitava Mukherjee

  There are now uncomfortable signals from the eastern border of our country. The caretaker government of Bangladesh, which had started well by apprehending a large number of criminals, many of them being political bigwigs, suddenly seems to have lost direction. Its diktat to the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to go to exile and asking Hasina Wajed not to return to Bangladesh are ill-conceived moves, certain to raise eyebrows about the actual character of the government. Ultimately the (…)

• Marx and Engels on 1857 Revolt

  14 May 2007, by Susobhan Sarkar

  Marx’s comments on the Revolt of 1857 constitute an original contribution to the study of contemporary Indian history. They are in sharp opposition to the established orthodox theory of regarding the rising as essentially a military mutiny, disfigured by ‘native’ atrocities, put down by British valour. It is interesting to reflect that modern research is at long last veering round to the viewpoint of Marx.
  Marx dealt in the main with the general character of the revolt, the question of (…)

• 1857 In Our History

  14 May 2007, by P C Joshi *

  [(The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Great Indian Revolt of 1857 is being observed this month. Though the spark for the Revolt was lit by Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore earlier the same year, the Revolt actually began in May at Meerut: on May 6, 85 sepoys of the 3rd Bengal Cavalry at Meerut refused to use the cartridge, the cause of the rebellion—all of them were placed under arrest; on May 9 these sepoys were brought to a general punishment parade at the Meerut Parade Ground, (…)

• Editorial

  14 May 2007, by SC

  As we observe the 150th anniversary of the Great Indian Revolt of 1857 this week, it is necessary to recount the positive features of that First Indian War of Independence which shook the edifice of the colonial empire. First of all, there was remarkable unity among all those who engineered the upsurge or else it could not have sustained for a considerable length of time while injecting fear into the minds of the alien rulers.
  Secondly, Hindus and Muslims fought side by side against the (…)

• Some Issues Concerning Industrialisation of West Bengal

  8 May 2007, by Kamal Nayan Kabra

  Like any predominantly agricultural economy, West Bengal (WB) too needs to go in for a strong drive for industrialisation. More so after its farm sector has made a reasonable progress as its average yield level is higher than the national average, the time is ripe for concerted moves to restore the prime position that WB had in industrial development not too long ago. Is this kind of an argument reminiscent of the lesson of history that successful agricultural revolution provides a solid (…)

• Kashmir : Long Haul

  8 May 2007, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  Can the light be at last seen at the end of the tunnel in Kashmir? This question has now come up with the statement by the Union Home Minister that the time to resume the political process in Kashmir has arrived and with the report that Farooq Abdullah has been called by the government to return home from abroad and he has agreed to respond.
  It was obvious when Jagmohan was summarily removed from the post of the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir that the government would now proceed along a (…)

• The Myth of Inefficiency

  8 May 2007

  Celebrations began among anti-reservationists with the SC putting a stay on the decision to reserve 27 per cent of seats for OBCs in educational institutions—such as central universities, IIMs, IITs, AIIMS—funded, managed or under the aegis of the Central Government, in the coming session. The jubilant protestors voiced different opinions regarding victory of merit, efficiency, equality etc. Students, communities and even masses seem to have divided into ‘us’ and ‘they’, pro- and anti- (…)

• No New Cold War

  8 May 2007

  A unipolar world has not been and cannot be created, because the available military, political, financial, economic and other resources are not sufficient to build an empire in today’s conditions of globalisation. For some time, though, the myth of a unipolar world influenced the mentality and behaviour in quite a few countries, which believed the myth and invested political capital in it. But the practice of the past six years has demonstrated convincingly that attempts to disregard the (…)