Mainstream Weekly

The Case Is Not Closed

Nirmalya Biswas — 2011-06-20T06:58:34Z

June 12 happens to be the World Day Against Child Labour. We are publishing the following article in that context.
Childhood happens once. But many do not have a childhood at all. The employers of the domestic child workers commonly see themselves as the messiahs. The notion of generosity gives them a human face. The policy that ‘child must not work' is not negotiable. In an affluent middle-class family male members usually have the edge on their female counterparts while sharing the (…)

- 2011

Nailing Corruption Is No Cakewalk

Nirmalya Biswas — 2011-06-09T09:02:39Z

There is a growing worldwide recognition that adequate protection to the whistleblower is a precondition for a corruption-free democratic society. Over the years whistleblowers have been found dead in mysterious circumstances in India for exposing corruption. Their gruesome killings haunt our memory with a harsh reminder that they are hardly offered any protection. The concern for their protection caught the attention of the entire nation after the murder of Satyendra Dubey, Manjunath (…)

- 2011

May Day 2011 - Commemorating 125 Years of Workers' Uprising in Chicago

Nirmalya Biswas — 2011-05-03T18:51:36Z

It all happened on a Saturday; 125 years have passed since then. In those days people had to work for ten to twelve hours a day. But on that Saturday they broke the rule. They set aside their fear and strife, and left work. With an indomitable spirit they dared to raise their voice and make a start. Together they dreamt to change the world. “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what we will”1 was what they decided as something non-negotiable. Workers in thousands (…)

- 2011

Making Money while Helping the Poor

Nirmalya Biswas — 2010-12-31T02:47:27Z

Introduction
Is it possible to make money while helping the poor fighting against poverty? In the last ten years or so, at least one business, micro-financing, appears to answer in the affirmative. Micro-finance has been a catchword for a few years now, a panacea for poverty eradication that the poor have all been looking for. It would carry away the poor out of poverty as if by swaying the magic wand of microfinance. The birth of the movement roughly coincided with the rise of the (…)

- 2010

The Conspiracy of Silence

Nirmalya Biswas — 2010-10-06T14:54:09Z

Irom Sharmila Chanu will be completing ten years of her continuous fast, an exceptionally courageous feat in our country and the world, on November 4, 2010, that is, precisely a month from now. We are thus publishing the following article on Gandhi Jayanti as Sharmila is silently upholding the legacy of the Mahatma in the true Gandhian spirit shunning the glare of limelight.
Prologue
I was then young in the early 1970s when I first heard the song “Blowin' in the Wind” of Bob Dylan. The (…)

- 2010

Micro Credit—The Hidden Agenda

Nirmalya Biswas — 2009-07-11T18:00:39Z

It was when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006, that ‘Micro Credit' hit the headlines of the media. Poverty alleviation became the buzzword. A wave of euphoria for micro credit swept the public mind. Micro Credit resembled the magical Aladin Lamp! It seemed, the darkness of poverty would disappear as soon as the lamp was lit. The Christian supremo, Pope Benedict XVI, sent a message to a conference at the Vatican blessing the micro-credit programme for promoting “a culture (…)

- July 2009