Mainstream Weekly

Xi Jinping's China

Dipak Malik — 2017-02-12T17:09:45Z

After having some serious hiccups last year in its long march to a market economy with Chinese characteristics, the synod of the top Mandarin bosses has confabulated for resuscitating the second largest sagging economy of the world by mid-December in their annual stock-taking of the national economy. They call it ‘supply side' reform thus not altogether rejecting the supply side economics in the style of Milton Friedman but introduce some serious tinkering into it. The reform is aimed at (…)

- 2017

Goodbye, Sushil Koirala

Dipak Malik — 2016-04-10T18:26:02Z

TRIBUTE
The is a tribute to the late Prime Minister of Nepal, Sushil Koirala (August 12, 1939-February 9, 2016), by someone who was a close friend and knew him intimately since his days of exile in Varanasi.
Sushil Koirala's was an extraordinary story where a very transparent, simple, honest to the core and plain person could reach to the position of the Prime Minister as well as an able organiser of the long and tortuous battle against dictatorship and monarchy in Nepal. He learned his (…)

- 2016

A Delicate Shade of Pink

Dipak Malik — 2015-12-06T18:52:52Z

BOOK REVIEW
A Delicate Shade of Pink: The Lives of Hella Wuolijoki and Salme Dutt in the Service of Revolution by Erkki Tuomioja; Wisdom Tree: New Delhi; 2013; pages: Xiv+375.
A Delicate Shade of Pink by Erkki Tuomioja is a story from a distant corner of Scandinavia mapping Finland, Estonia and Sweden. The author of the book is currently the Foreign Minister of Finland having vast international experience. He is a votary of the Nordic welfare state and believes that the Nordic variety of (…)

- 2015

Modi and the Naive Western Media

Dipak Malik — 2015-07-25T22:12:41Z

The enterprise of the post-Independence nation-building in India was given a short shrift right after 1991 with Manmohan Singh changing the essentials of the Nehruvian model of nation-building. The only residual element of the post-independence agenda, which though taken by the Congress party, was secularism in 2004 after a full-blown regime of soft Hindutva under Rajiv Gandhi, who initiated also the early phase of the globalisation-liberalisation move. From 1985 to 2014, about 30 years of (…)

- 2015

Onset of an Anniversary

Dipak Malik — 2014-11-16T12:16:19Z

The 125th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru would roll on from November 14, 2014. Had there been a Congress Government, the occasion would have been marked by pomp and show though it would not have been in all likelihood more than a poor caricature. The 125th anniversary comes at a time when a BJP Government is in power at the Centre with a Prime Minister who does not conceal his preferences that do not at all lie with Nehru or Nehruvian India.
Still the birth anniversary of the first (…)

- 2014

Socialism in the Indian Ocean

Dipak Malik — 2014-06-21T16:27:19Z

The small island of Mauritius, literally a dot in the Indian Ocean, with a checqured history of people migrating becomes an interesting spectacle of Indian as well as European social history, particularly of the 18th century, embe-dded in the deep-seated malaise in society and economy in the age of the Empire.
Actually, the Indian labour diaspora was a two-way traffic: one internal, where the Assam tea gardens were recruiting hapless poor peasantry from the parched land and rocky heights (…)

- 2014

Nehru and the Peasantry

Dipak Malik — 2014-06-01T13:42:00Z

When I met the Panchayat Pradhan of the village, a sprightly young man in his thirties on a dusty bazaar site about 40 km away from Banaras, I could see his self-confidence. He came from a Dalit background. Yet, when we decided to have a lunch meeting under the shadow of the neem tree, the Rajputs, the former principal of a reputed nearby college and other powerful village personalities showed a bonhomie unimaginable 50 years back in that feudal bastion of the green expanse of Eastern UP. (…)

- 2014

Why Banaras is Uncomfortable with Modi

Dipak Malik — 2014-05-12T11:45:39Z

Narendra Modi, the new mascot of the Sangh Parivar, has chosen Varanasi as his spring-board for his prime ministerial ambition in 2014. Nineteen ninetynine saw Lucknow sending Atal Behari Vajpayee on the prime ministerial trajectory. It was different as Lucknow is the city of composite culture and had offered one of the finest Hindustani cultural and literary traditions which represented the essence of the Hindu-Muslim cultural matrix. Narendra Modi's arrival in Kashi is, of course, (…)

- 2014

Nepal: A Neighbourhood Story

Dipak Malik — 2014-03-03T16:30:07Z

The Himalayan cultural topography, which sparks out loudly its colours in the society, politics and day-to-day life in Kathmandu valley and around, has returned to the task of drafting a republican Constitution for the second time.
It was hardly a surprise when the term for the first Constituent Assembly ended in 2012 after four years of intermittent exercises, yet was not able to settle the ticklish issues and produce a Constitution. The first Constituent Assembly had a majority of (…)

- 2014

Absorbing Narrative of a Community on the Move while being in Confrontation and Crisis

Dipak Malik — 2010-11-10T15:08:56Z

BOOK REVIEW
The Warp and the Weft: Community and Gender Identity among Banaras Weavers by Vasanthi Raman; Routledge, New Delhi; 2010; pages 384; Rs 795.
The Warp and the Weft is a serious attempt in building blocs in study of ‘the invisible' in the mainstream social science discourse. Admittedly the dominant group of watchers of Indian society invariably, because of the perception bias, seem to ignore questions of plurality embedded in the scene, where distinct identities of minorities (…)

- 2010