Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Union Budget 2019-20: The Numbers Do Not Add Up

  13 July 2019

  by A. Sunil Dharan
  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has presented her maiden Budget under conditions that are extremely trying for the economy. Economic growth has slumped from 8.2 per cent in 2016-17 to 6.8 per cent in 2108-19. It was 5.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2018-19. The investment-GDP ratio, which had reached a peak of 35.6 per cent in 2007, has been coming down since then. It was 26.4 per cent in 2017. Private consumption expenditure, that had kept the GDP growth rate (…)

• Do We Need a Bill Criminalising Instant Triple Talaaq?

  13 July 2019

  by Ram Puniyani
  A debate is raging about a Bill on triple talaaq introduced by the Modi 2.0 government in Parliament in June 2019. Probably this first major effort by this government is based on the argument of giving gender justice to ‘Muslim sisters’. The Modi 1.0 government had introduced a similar Bill, but it could not become implementable as despite being passed in the Lok Sabha, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not get it passed in the Rajya Sabha, where it did not have (…)

• Khushwant Singh’s Foresight on Hindutva Fascism

  13 July 2019, by Humra Quraishi

  MUSINGS
  There was something or everything so very extraordinarily different to Khushwant Singh that even after five years of his passing away he holds sway. At the recently concluded Khushwant Singh Literary Festival at King’s College, London, it got more than apparent that the man’s views and viewpoints were of great significance. Perhaps it wouldn’t be amiss to state that he was far ahead of his times. And, yes, definitely farsighted.
  More than a decade back he’d realised the dark, (…)

• Spectre of New India

  13 July 2019

  by Zulafqar Ahmed
  India has been an epitome of pluralism, tolerance, and diversity since the ages. The religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity of India has left inerasable imprints all over the world. Varieties of social groups and ideological differences among the communities could not shake the unity of India. India was imagined by Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel, Azad, Ashfa-qullah, and Bhagat Singh as a country where love ruled over hatred, mutual-coexistence ruled over exclusion. (…)

• Assam NRC — a Humanitarian Crisis Looming Large - CSSS Fact-Finding Team’s Report

  13 July 2019

  DOCUMENT
  “Citizenship is man’s basic right for it is nothing less than the right to have rights. Remove this priceless possession and there remains a stateless person, disgraced and degraded in the eyes of his countrymen,” once said Earl Warren, a prominent jurist. His words rightly sum up the fate of millions of residents in Assam whose names are excluded from the draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the others who are in the detention camps in Assam declared as (…)

• Lynching in Post-Election West Bengal

  13 July 2019, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Barely a month after the publication of results of the parliamentary elections, a draconian act of lynching took place in the Maldah district of West Bengal. A Muslim youth, who was beaten up by “few of his acquaintances” on June 26, 2019, died of his injuries later. Reportedly, Sanaullah Sheikh, in his early twenties, was called to Baishnabnagar market, about a kilometre from his village. It is reported in The Hindu (quoting an official source): “He was asked to start a bike so that he (…)

• Return of Hindutva: A Challenge for Secularism

  13 July 2019, by Gargi Chakravartty

  BOOK REVIEW
  Hindutva’s Second Coming by Subhas Gatade; published by Media House, Delhi; 2019; pages: 272; Rs 395 (US $ 18).
  The return of Modi to power with a huge margin in this 2019 election is a clear verdict for the Hindutva plank. Why and how it happened leave us, the secular billions, to ponder about the reality and its aftermath. And at that juncture Subhas Gatade’s 272-page analysis titled ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ gives us something concrete to think over once again. This (…)

• Return of }Hindutva: A Challenge for Secularism

  13 July 2019, by Gargi Chakravartty

  BOOK REVIEW
  Hindutva’s Second Coming by Subhas Gatade; published by Media House, Delhi; 2019; pages: 272; Rs 395 (US $ 18).
  The return of Modi to power with a huge margin in this 2019 election is a clear verdict for the Hindutva plank. Why and how it happened leave us, the secular billions, to ponder about the reality and its aftermath. And at that juncture Subhas Gatade’s 272-page analysis titled ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ gives us something concrete to think over once again. This (…)

• Do Not Endorse Lynchings, Please

  13 July 2019, by T J S George

  IMPRESSIONS
  In a democracy, a working majority is better than a brute majority. This is especially so in a country like India where the structure of democracy is honoured while the spirit is not. The effects of the brute majority enjoyed by the present government have been unhealthy as the actions and statements of its leaders frequently demonstrate. BJP leaders themselves must think where this is going to take the country, and indeed their party.
  Consider, for example, an MLA going (…)

• July 1993 Tribute to Prof Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

  13 July 2019, by Nikhil Chakravartty

  June 29, 2019 marked the 126th birth anniversary of Prof Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. On this occasion we reproduce the following piece by N.C. that appeared at the time of Mahalanobis’ birth centenary. This is particularly important now that the Narandra Modi dispensation has decided to completely devalue and destroy the Planning Commission which was painstakingly built during the days of the Nehru-Mahaalanobis model of development that charted out the path for the country’s self-reliant regeneration.