'It was the first document he had seen that asked him about his past in such detail; it was the only interest this country (America) had shown in his origins, and it was most inconvenient. To get ahead, he had to find out where he had come from.'
'This was our country, after all, our India, humara Hindustan -- why would we go anywhere else?'
Three businessmen disclose their success mantras: One belongs to an old Marwari family, another is a second generation industrialist whose father scripted an amazing rags-to-riches story and the third was a professional till one day he succumbed to the charms of entrepreneurship.
Without reforms to boost returns for multinational capital, Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' campaign will face testing times.
Aruneel Sadadekar/Rediff.com picks his IPL Dream Team of Season 9. Check it out!
The retrospective tax decision reversing the January 2012 Supreme Court verdict in the Vodafone case has often been cited as the reason for foreign investors losing confidence in India as an investment destination.
The director talks about his new hit, Madras.
The successful effort to combat Cyclone Phailin threatens to put disaster mitigation, and a fundamental overhaul of how disaster management in India is structured, on the back-burner, says Anand Sarkar.
Car makers are cautiously optimistic, even as two-wheeler firms are clearly upbeat.
With a massive final push, which began mid-November, Syrian forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad took over the last remaining rebel strongholds in the historic city of Aleppo on the night of December 12. They only won a ruined city and ruined lives.
In this exclusive excerpt from his autobiography, A Century Is Not Enough, Sourav Ganguly makes some startling revelations.
It was also suggested that an all-party delegation should visit Kashmir to assess the situation but the government did not make commitments regarding any of their demands.
The ongoing daily spat between Narendra Modi and the Congress party serves to cover up the real problems being faced by the people, says A Ganesh Nadar
FM needs to convince Indians to invest more in stocks.
Wealth of the richest 62 people has risen 44% in the five years since 2010, while that of the bottom half fell by 41%
'Olympic wrestling is like an old Nokia phone.' 'WWE is like an iPhone.' The Great Khali's academy turns pro-wrestling dreams into reality
Not Mekhail. Not Rahul. Not anyone. 'Wouldn't someone have asked?' Indrani asked.
'Mere 'literacy' is not the same thing as 'education', which involves conceding that others have rights, and that one of those prerogatives is a woman's right to dignity. In 2012, the Kerala police registered 1,474 cases of rape, of which 455 victims were children,' says T V R Shenoy.
The shops became a subject of a political controversy last week.
It's been 100 years since Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, and its legacy remains visible even today in the buildings and monuments scattered throughout St Petersburg.
'... not even a moral one, let alone a legal one.' 'Even if it is assumed that Deepak Kochhar tried to influence his wife into doing something dodgy for his 'social acquaintance', why would she do it?' 'By all accounts she has been granted share options in ICICI Bank of a very substantial amount which easily makes her a multi billion-pati.' 'She did not become CEO against some stiff competition by being stupid and concocting devious cock-and-bull renewable energy stories.' S Murlidharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas, unravels the Deepak Kochhar-Videocon controversy.
India's first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine is a considerable achievement -- and should have an impact on security strategy
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It's perverse to rationalise 'controlled' killings or torture -- without going down a slippery moral slope. Once the state stoops to torture, it's liable to sink into tyranny, says Praful Bidwai.
Hein Kiessling has the kind of access in Pakistan that journalists (and spies) would die for, says Kanika Datta.
When Pope Francis canonizes the late Mother Teresa at the Vatican on September 4, she will officially be recognised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. However, for her followers in Kolkata, the title is a mere formality.
'It took a 75-year-old director to teach the reformist set of Facebook users that Evil is not an aberration, but something that resides in the most regular seeming of human beings,' says Sreehari Nair.
Much of the negative perceptions of the north-east diaspora owe their origin and existence to the perverse policies of the central government toward the region and its people. This realisation must be the beginning of an earnest endeavour to address the issue, says R N Ravi.
Congress Member of Parliament and party spokesperson Sushmita Dev tells Kavita Chowdhury that party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's "new kind of politics" has revitalised the party, lifting it from the gloom of the 2014 general elections.
No one in his right senses will expect Ajinkya Rahane to bat like Sachin Tendulkar or make thousands of runs and own a plethora of records. But the right-hander guarantees to carry forward the rich legacy of the fabled Mumbai school of batting.
'The non-cinephiles may hold up Sholay as their personal favourite and the cinephile lot may quote something like 8 1/2 as the movie to load with them on the ark.' 'But for a good percentage of these people from both categories, if there is one film to simply laze around with, a film that can extract them from their dull funk, it's definitely DCH.'
Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde was awarded the Mahavir Chakra, the second highest honour in battle, for winning an epic battle in Pakistan. In a brilliant and gruesome assault, what he and his men achieved that September 50 years ago had never been seen before.
'Not a single person I spoke to there believes that the Kundalkulam plant is safe.'
Samuel Stokes made India his home and participated in the freedom struggle. He was the only American to be imprisoned for sedition; the British CID maintained a special file on him.
With the images of Rajendra Babu, Radhakrishnan, K R Narayanan, V V Giri and Kalam in my mind, the image of my beloved hero dancing ungainly to 'Merey angney main tumharra kya kaam hai', doesn't make a smooth transition, says Sudhir Bisht.
'The entire system acted as cheerleaders to Vijay Mallya. The RBI failed, the banks failed, the auditors of the banks and Mallya failed.'
'Ne Win kept good relations with the Nehru family even though he did nothing to do business with India. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Ne Win took off to an undisclosed destination, leading to rumours that he had gone to India. But we had no knowledge of his visit and days later, we were told that he was so struck with grief that he went into meditation on an island.' Ambassador T P Sreenivasan delves into Rajiv Bhatia's new book on mysterious Myanmar.
A first-of-its-kind travel show explores the special bond a father and daughter share.
Ashraf Palarakunnummal has one mission in life -- to ensure the dignity of the dead. This he does by seeing to it that expats who die in the Gulf are transported back to their home countries without too many hassles for the bereaved families. Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com talks to the Good Samaritan who was honoured with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman recently.
President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Union ministers, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and various other top leaders have condoled Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's demise and paid glowing tributes to her.
'People didn't know of my presence until they saw my saris at the Lakme Fashion Week.'
