Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

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  RTI, Karnataka, Sheila Dikshit, A.K. Roy

  28 July 2019, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  With the BJP getting support from the parties that are fence-sitters in the Rajya Sabha to take the ruling conglomerate’s strength in the Upper House to a majority, the NDA, now in power for the second time in the country, is railroading legislations in Parliament. It started with the RTI Amendment Bill today as it was passed in both the Houses even after the Congress staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha when its demand to send the legislation to a Select Committee was rejected by (…)

• Gandhi or no Gandhi, Priyanka Shows the Way

  28 July 2019, by Badri Raina

  The Indian National Congress has been in the doldrums no doubt.
  The many autopsies that have been airing since the results of the general elections came have tended to interpret the difficulties of the Party variously in mock, commiserative, patro-nising, terminal terms. There are of course those commentators as well who have wisely observed that the revival of the Party remains crucial to retrieving the descent of the republic into an undemocratic, Bonapartist nightmare. Where some (…)

• RSS in Textbooks: Contrasting Concepts of Nation and Nation-building

  28 July 2019

  by Ram Puniyani
  Nationalism has been a matter of debate yet again. For last few years we saw individuals being labelled as anti-national for criticising the ruling government, we witnessed the attack on the JNU on the ground that it is a breeding ground of anti-nationals. At the same time those belonging to ‘Hindu nationalism’ have been presenting themselves as nationalists. The shrewdness involved in this is that they have been hiding the prefix Hindu to the word, nation. It is this (…)

• Now the RTI Act

  28 July 2019, by Barun Das Gupta

  The RTC (Amendment) Bill which the ruling party got passed in the Lok Sabha by its sheer brute majority is of a piece with the Modi Government’s systematic and sustained efforts at subverting the autonomy of every constitutional and statutory body and making it subservient to the Union Government. The statement of objectives of the Bill clearly states that the government wants to reduce the stature of the Central Information Commissioner.
  At present the CIC’s status is equivalent to the (…)

• Political Defections in Karnataka and Goa: A Blow to Democracy

  28 July 2019

  by Joseph Abraham
  With the political environment in Karnataka and Goa getting murkier after the shameful political defections, the prophecy of Lord Acton, the famous English historian, politician and writer, that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely“ seems to become a dangerous reality in the country.
  The recent inter-party defections in these two States is causing grave concern to the political future of the state as it has become a menacing trend among (…)

• Turkey Undeterred by US Sanctions Threat

  28 July 2019, by M K Bhadrakumar

  The loss of Istanbul to an Opposition candidate in Turkey’s recent local elections was hyped up by many American commentators, especially pro-Israeli analysts, as marking the end of President Recep Erdogan’s 17-year long dominance in the country’s politics ever since his stunning victory in the 2002 general election.
  The main agenda behind the doomsday predictions and the ‘psywar’ was to rattle Erdogan, soften him up and force him to jettison his staunchly anti-Zionist policy and his open (…)

• It is Sanghi Rashtravad indeed!

  28 July 2019

  by Hargopal Singh
  Assorted minds, big and small, continue to rack their brains to interpret the results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There is virtually a spate of opinions which widely diverge. Undoubtedly the BJP, led by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo, had a cake-walk in these elections. Its landslide victory in large parts of the country is unprecedented in ways more than one. So far no non-Congress government was ever repeated; it has taken a quantum jump this time. Jubilation in (…)

• Open Letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University

  28 July 2019, by Shamsul Islam

  Respected Vice-Chancellor Dr Siddhartha-vinayaka P. Kane Saheb,
  I am writing this open letter to you on a critical issue concerning the contents of the syllabus at your university. As per a communiqué of the university which must have had your concurrence, the history of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and its role in ‘nation-building’ have been included in the syllabus for the second year BA (History) course. Surprisingly, it has been accommodated by removing a crucial topic, ‘Rise (…)

• Rainbow of Races

  28 July 2019

  Is white psyche racist? Hitler’s industrial ‘final solution’, Eliot’s unsuspecting line: ‘Gentile or Jew’ in the Waste Land, Trump’s taunting tweet: “let ‘em leave, let ‘em leave”— all hinted at its outer texture.
  Is there a prejudicial worldview? It sounds so, flying in the face of racial diversity. Yet all colours: white, brown, black, mingle together, building below the crust a coalition— binding, uniting rainbow of races.
  A.K. Das

• What Does the Union Budget Signify?

  28 July 2019

  by Anup K. Sinha
  This year the Union Budget was, for all practical purposes, presented twice. The first time it was in February 2019 as an Interim Budget which seemed exactly like a full-fledged annual Budget. The next time it was after the parliamentary election results were out. The second time was the full Budget for 2019-20. The two budgets were very similar in one sense: both were in large parts political rhetoric that appeared to have come out of a party manifesto. To understand this (…)