He's a devout Hindu but places fairness above religion.
He's looked after commerce, finance, home ... and holds forth on his predecessors, their bosses, his bosses, and more.
Sheikh Chilli is a well-known character in South Asian mythology. He abounds in vision, dreams, and knows how to inspire people with his talk. He is brimming with futuristic ideas, but has no idea how to realise them: The most famous Sheikh Chilli story is how he decided to cut a branch off a tree when he needed firewood, except that he was sitting on the branch while cutting it.Several in the Bharatiya Janata Party are reminded of Sheikh Chilli while evaluating the team.
The consensus in the intelligence community is that there never has been and never will be the kind of super spook that M K Narayanan is considered to have been in the government.
The stranglehold of Mulayam's family on the party is at the centre of the debate.
K Chandrashekhar Rao belongs to an intermediate caste called Velama -- corresponding to Jats in north India. Velamas, who were kings in medieval India, are now rich landlords with a presence in at least three districts in Telangana -- Warangal, Medak and Nizamabad. Telangana has been backward for centuries. Remember, it never came under the British but was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad who did set up a few factories and a textile mill in Warangal.
At a recent Track II conference of Indians and Pakistanis, predictions about the fate of Richard Holbrooke, the key interlocutor for US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak, because nothing can be solved in Afghanistan without addressing Pakistan) were dire. He's losing his job and going home -- after all, he's achieved very little, and he's abrasive and rude.
Today, Hooda wears a hangdog look. With 40 MLAs, he's barely been able to form a government. He is at the mercy of independents - and has had to part with portfolios as important as transport and tourism - so that they don't cross over to Om Prakash Chautala whose Indian National Lok Dal, with 32 MLAs, is snapping at his heels.
This year, the India Economic Summit has more foreign companies attending than Indian ones.
The first five years of Koda's life as a BJP legislator were uneventful: he used this time to consolidate relationships. But elections came around in 2005 and the BJP turned down Koda's claim of a nomination. He contested as an Independent from his old constituency and won.
Former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan and former chief secretary of the North West Frontier Province, Rustam Shah Mohmand, tells Aditi Phadnis that the United States is part of the problem in Afghanistan.
Putting an end to the fierce scramble for India's iron ore resources, the government has decided to split the Chiria iron ore mines in Jharkhand into two and give at least half the reserves to Steel Authority of India Ltd for its expansion plans. The other half will be kept for development by the private sector later, said informed sources.
The Bihar result could be a flash in the pan but it has Nitish Kumar seriously worried. More so, because the loss represents a defeat for many of the reforms he was trying to introduce.
Kaushik Basu, the C Marks Professor of International Studies, professor of economics, and director of the Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell, has been asked informally if he would consider becoming Chief Economic Advisor (CEA), a post that will fall vacant after Arvind Virmani ends his tenure and leaves to join the International Monetary Fund at the end of the month.
The government is actively considering raising the retirement age of all central government employees, including those in the armed forces, from the present 60 to 62 years.Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has submitted a report to the prime minister outlining all the pros and cons of the move, including the cascading effects on government employment and the huge savings, at least for two years, on account of retirement payouts.
How did a leader, once as important as Buta Singh, suffer such a precipitous fall from grace? After being Home Minister and governor, Singh is looking at a Bihar government probe at some of the actions he had taken as the governor of Bihar and his family is caught up in a clutch of court cases -- most of a criminal nature.
But India's outgoing foreign secretary should not be judged solely on what happened at Sharm El Sheikh.
The new foreign secretary brings formidable experience on Sino-Indian relations to South Block
Running a state was a lot more treacherous than building roads.
The story of how P Chidambaram got the home rather than the finance portfolio can be told now. The day the election results came out and it became clear the United Progressive Alliance was going to form the government, Congress President Sonia Gandhi called Pranab Mukherjee for a meeting and asked him what portfolio he would like.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances