Mainstream Weekly

One Death: Several Questions

2016-02-13T23:31:47Z

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
After battling against death for eight days, Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Kopad breathed his last at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi this morning. The poignancy of his death becomes more acute when it is borne in mind that he has left behind his young wife and a two-year-old daughter. The very fact that he could keep himself alive for five long days after an avalanche buried him and several others under 35 feet of snow at an altitude of 19,600 feet atop (…)

- 2015

Perverted Logic of Powerful Corporate Interests drive the India-France Nuclear Connection

Harsh Kapoor — 2016-02-13T23:30:29Z

by Harsh Kapoor
The French President was in India as the chief guest at the surreal nationalist military parade of January 26, 2016. As is the practice, he was accompanied by a high-powered delegation and many multilateral deals got signed between the two countries. There are big ones that have been in the news, have been in the making for many years and may still take time to fructify. These concern the sale by France of nuclear power plants and of flying war toys to India.
India's (…)

- 2015

Sangh-BJP Atacks and Police Brutality Cannot Stop the Battle for Justice for Rohith

2016-02-13T23:17:57Z

The following is the editorial in ML Update (a CPI-ML weekly newsmagazine) of February 2-8, 2016.
It is being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers.
The institutional murder of young Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad has shocked the entire country and students everywhere have erupted in protests. Given the crucial involvement of the BJP's Central Minis-ters, Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani, in the entire episode, the resignation of these (…)

- 2015

In Lieu of a Bio-data

2016-02-13T23:15:54Z

TRIBUTE
Renowned Professor of Political Theory at the University of Delhi and well-known Marxist thinker Prof Randhir Singh, 95, passed away in Delhi on January 31 night. He was cremated at the Lodhi Crematorium in the evening of February 1, 2016 before a large group of students, colleagues, friends and admirers.
Prof Manoranjan Mohanty, a noted political scientist, was are of the first post-graduate students taught by Prof Singh. “I had come to Delhi for an MA and he was my professor,” (…)

- 2015

On the Question of Socialism Today

Randhir Singh — 2016-02-13T23:10:57Z

The following are excerpts from the conlcuding part of an address that Prof Randhir Singh delivered to the journal Itihasbodh at Allahabad on March 8, 2007. The full text of the address, entitled ‘Future of Socialism', is available in the Monthly Review website http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org The concluding part of the address was published in Mainstream (February 16, 2008).
It was Engels' adjuration to followers to ‘not pick quotations from Marx or from him as if from sacred texts, but (…)

- 2015

Prof Randhir Singh: The Compulsive Critique

Rup Narayan Das — 2016-02-13T23:01:49Z

A STUDENT'S TRIBUTE
I learnt about the passing away of Prof Randhir Singh while flipping through the newspaper, The Tribune. Not many newspapers in India reported his passing away, although there were a couple of articles in leading newspapers. The non-coverage of his demise was a bit shocking to his students like me who placed him on a high pedestal for his profound scholarship, his conviction, intellectual rigour, critical analysis and incisive insight.
When I joined the Delhi (…)

- 2015

Crisis in the Social Sector

Bharat Dogra — 2016-02-13T22:51:54Z

A crisis situation has emerged in the social sector in several parts of the country due to lack of availability of adequate financial resources.
The ‘social sector' includes women and child development, nutrition, health, education, panchayat raj, special provisions for weaker sections (Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities etc.), some aspects of agriculture and water (such as special schemes for livelihood protection, drinking water and sanitation for weaker (…)

- 2015

A Cancer Survivor speaks in First Person

A K Biswas — 2016-02-13T22:13:23Z

This article is being published to mark to the International Cancer Day which fell on February 4.
The screeching headline of a national daily, “Not bad luck, pollutants and lifestyle cause most cancers.........”,1 urged me to look back and pen down my personal account as a cancer survivor.
I landed at Kolkata Airport en route to Patna from Hyberabad where I had attended the Provasi Bharatiya Divas 2006 as a delegate of the Bihar Government. In that late evening on arrival at the (…)

- 2015

Kalpana Dutt

Nikhil Chakravartty — 2016-02-13T22:10:36Z

From N.C.'s Writings
The following lines were written by N.C. twentyone years ago and published in this journal's February 18, 1995 issue. It is being reproduced on the occasion of the distinguished revolutionary Kalpana Dutt's twentyfirst death anniversary which fell on February 8 this year. It came and went with hardly anyone remembering her on that day. Kalpana's birth centenary on July 27, 2013 also went virtually unnoticed. But we in Mainstream have decided to offer our homage to her (…)

- 2015

Decrying Afzal's Execution is not ‘Anti-National'

2016-02-13T21:55:38Z

by Mohammad Ashraf
An event at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on February 9 on Mohammad Afzal Guru, the Kashmiri young man who was executed in Delhi's Tihar Jail precisely three years ago on February 9, 2013, found two groups of students clashing with each other leading to the police being deployed on the campus to restore order.
The incident occurred at the end of a cultural evening organised by some students (to mark Afzal's third death anniversary) at the Sabarmati Dhaba (…)

- 2015