Shobha Warrier has been associated with Rediff from its inception and currently works as Senior Editorial Director. She is also the author of five books in English, Battlefield India: 25 years of Politricks and Economix, Dreamchasers: Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas, Dreamchaers: Women Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas, His Days with Bapu, and The Little Flower girl and Others- A diary of a journalist. Her three Malayalam short story collections include Jalavidya, Meghana and Ramakundam. She won the Lalitambika Antharjanam special award in 1996 for her book, Jalavidya. She likes talking to people and listening to their stories! You can e-mail the author at shobhaw@rediff.co.in
'As the financier, she controls the party.'
'The world is going to be more insular.' 'What India needs to do is develop the domestic market for domestic consumption.' 'The emphasis has to be on Bharat as against India.'
'One thing is sure: After this Budget, no Ambani-Adani tag will be attached to the government.'
'Our concern is about today and there is nothing in the Budget for the MSME sector to feel positive right now.'
This is the story of a biotechnology engineer who, at age 22, founded Terra Greens Organic -- a company that aims to engage at least 10,000 farmers in organic farming in the next one year.
'We see different people bringing different resentments and we feel this is the result of the deprivation of an identity because of the reintroduction of Hindi, the Hindutva overtones in the national discourse, the betrayal of the Dravidian parties and even small things like the Devanagiri script in the Rs 2,000 note.'
'What is surprising is the scale and spontaneity of the mobilisation and the social profile of the mobilisation.' 'Not just the youth, but women, children and families are part of this now.' 'This is completely unprecedented.'
'Politically, Tamil Nadu has faced several setbacks in the past -- the water sharing issue with Karnataka, on Katchatheevu, on the Tamil fishermen issue...' 'In all these issues, the central and state governments acted in an inefficient and incompetent manner.' 'That must have stayed in the minds of the people.'
'We have not seen even during Vajpayee's time what Modi and the BJP has adopted now.'
'Some of the policies NITI Aayog has taken, we feel lean towards the corporates.' 'In a democracy, when you are making a policy decision, you are expected to take the views of all the stakeholders.'
'Nobody expected the slowdown to go for these many days. Unfortunately, it is an unbelievably bad slow down.'
'There is no doubt that Sasikala wanted the transition to go this way.' 'The only thing the AIADMK MLAs want is to stay in power.'
'Sasikala definitely has an emotional advantage over the others, but there are very seasoned politicians with a strong support base.' 'For the time being, they may toe her line.'
'In the name of cultural nationalism, Modi wants to impose another ideology on Muslims.' 'His agenda, we feel, is saffronisation of Indian culture.'
'The cash part is the lower hanging fruit compared to the other sources.' 'To attack the cash part of black money, I can't think of anything else but demonetisation.'
'Funny, eccentric and idiosyncratic.' 'There will never be another like him.'
'I see the queen bee kind of syndrome.' 'When they know that there is a queen bee, the bees will hang around her for some time and then fly away.' 'I won't be surprised if somebody else takes the place of the queen bee.'
'A person who came to take care of Jayalalithaa's personal needs slowly took control of her political life.'
Ghatam exponent T H Subash Chandran recalls his association with the Carnatic great who passed into the ages on Monday.
'How can you ask the common man alone to suffer when the rich is not doing any sacrifice?' 'To take out 10% of black money, you are punishing 90% of the public who have genuine white money.'
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