Mainstream Weekly

A Dam in Danger and Damned Delay in Settling a Simple Dispute

N A Karim — 2012-01-31T10:37:53Z

THE CENTRE AND TWO STATES ARE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE
The Mullaperiyar Dam in Kerala built on river Periyar 116 years ago using the then available construction materials and technology has become a matter of raucous controversy between the two contiguous States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. When the dam was built, its life was determined as 40 years. It was built at the initiative of the then composite Madras province for water for the five districts of the province administered by the paramount (…)

- 2012

Obama's Audacity of Doom

N A Karim — 2011-04-25T13:12:05Z

It is indeed a strange spectacle of a Nobel Peace Laureate, President Barack Obama, blithely marching through three major warfields—one he inherited from his predecessor, the other inherited, all right, but modified and renewed as his own, and the third one entirely of his own making. True, several Nobel Peace Prize winners had received this coveted world prize with their blood-stained hands while it bypassed the universally acclaimed apostles of peace. This is the irony of the human (…)

- 2011

A False Dawn and a Long Dark Night in West Asia

N A Karim — 2011-03-28T19:08:16Z

That the sudden spurt of democratic spirit on a street of Tunis in Tunisia as a result of a rather bizarre incident of self-immolation of an IT trained fruit-seller youth who was publicly slapped by a woman police and its spread to the whole country compelled its President Zein-al -Abdeen Ben Ali ending his twentythree-year- long autocracy seemed too strange to believe. But it happened in the full gaze of the whole world. Not only that this new urge for democracy ended the highly corrupt (…)

- 2011

Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?

N A Karim — 2011-03-19T18:49:00Z

The recent revelations of the role that a section of our press plays raises serious doubts whether Edmund Burke's Fourth Estate has become Earnest Hemingway's Fifth Column in the country.
It was Edmund Burke, the eighteenth century Whig politician and renowned British parliamen-tarian, who used the term Fourth Estate for the first time to denote the realm of the press. During the course of a speech in Parliament he termed the Lords Spiritual (Clergy) as the First Estate of the realm, the (…)

- 2011

Dawn of Democracy in the Islamic West

N A Karim — 2011-02-21T09:14:40Z

In the heyday of Islam the region of North and North West Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and Egypt comprising the coastal plain and Atlas Mountains of Morocco together with Algeria and Tunisia and Spain across Strait of Gibraltar formed the Maghrib (West) of Muslim world.
It all began with a simple incident common in the streets of countries under despotic rule in the Arab world where the police and Army are all powerful as the arms of autocratic authority. A young fruit vendor's cart (…)

- 2011

Country's Economy has Grown but the Nation's Moral Fibre is Gone

N A Karim — 2010-12-31T04:15:36Z

In a Malayalam feature film of yesteryear, the then reigning comedian and character actor, late S.P. Pillai, is in the role of a small-time gentleman thief. If he is found out with the stolen thing he, in his unperturbed cheerful manner, would say: “Oh is this yours? Then take it.” If the owner makes any noise about it, in his same characteristic calm, casual manner he would respond: “Why then the fuss? The moment I knew that it was yours I gave back the thing to you.”
Some of our (…)

- 2010

Kerala: Issue of Identity Politics and New Election Strategy of the CPI-M

N A Karim — 2010-07-10T07:21:03Z

Identity politics is the latest ideological issue that is being hotly discussed by political intellectuals particularly in the party precincts of the Communist Party of Kerala-Marxist. This issue was in circulation among a narrow section of Left ideologues specially after the publication of the book Manifesto of the Victims in Malayalam, written a few years ago by Prof K.E.N. Kunjahammad, a staunch supporter of the CPI-M and a much sought after writer and speaker of the party and its front (…)

- 2010

Inside Khadi, Khaki and Gabardine

N A Karim — 2010-02-22T15:11:33Z

A New Class of Politicians with their White Khadi Jibbas, Police Officers with their Well-starched Uniforms and Bureaucrats in their Neatly Tailored Gabardine Shutcoats together cheerfully Patronise Crime and Corruption in Modern India
Now all, including the political class, are up in arms against the retired Haryana Director General of Police, S.P.S. Rathore, for the crimes he committed nineteen years ago. He could not have gone scot-free then for the rape of a 14-year-old promising (…)

- 2010

A Peace Prize for Vague Promise, not for Real Performance

N A Karim — 2009-11-17T13:10:13Z

Of the now six Nobel Prizes the announcement of the names of awardees for Literature and Peace raises a few eyebrows everywhere every year. Unlike the science subjects, selection from among the nominees for peace is indeed a difficult task. Hands that were stained with human blood have received the medal and the cheque while men of meaningful peace have been overlooked, not once but several times. However, people all over the world look forward to the news of the selection every year because (…)

- November 2009

An Open Letter to Sasi Tharoor, my Representative in Parliament

N A Karim — 2009-10-25T10:32:48Z

Dear Mr Sasi Tharoor,
I am a voter of the Thiruvananthapuram parliamentary constituency from which you were returned to the Lok Sabha in the last elections. With the political glamour of a recent Malayalee contestant to the world's greatest prestigious executive post, Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, you won the parliamentary elections with a wide margin of votes over your rivals. As expected, you were made the Minister of State for External Affairs in the Dr Manmohan (…)

- October 2009