In an Independence Day Special series, Rediff.com celebrates India through the lives of her people. Today: Dr Ruveda Salam, the first IPS officer from the Kashmir Valley.
It was during his tenure that Air India made its first operating profit of Rs 105 crore in FY17 since the merger of Indian Airlines and Air India in 2007.
Though dubbed as the 'war hero', the role of Rajapaksa in ending the conflict with the LTTE with the death of its supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in 2009 is quite divisive as he stands accused of violating human rights, a charge he vehemently denies.
Breaking his silence, the ousted CBI chief said that he was transferred on the basis of allegations made by only one person, who was inimical to him.
'Khadi is my passion. The only idea behind this start up is to promote and popularise khadi.'
V Thulasidas, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service of Tripura cadre, on Monday, took over as the chairman and managing director of Air-India.
British PM David Cameron on Monday unveiled tough new measures, allowing parents of teens at risk of "poisonous" radicalisation to have their passports blocked.
Many senior officers believe the chief should have taken a stronger stand against using army resources to help what one officer calls "a government-friendly godman".
New Delhi bureaucrats, accustomed to leisurely lunches, golf in the afternoon and long weekends, have been shaken out of their somnolence, say authors. Fear and suspicion hang heavy over the red-sands.
'In the process of re-setting the equation between the bureaucracy and the political executive, the features that traditionally defined the bureaucracy will undergo a gradual metamorphosis in the next five years and may acquire a distinctly different character.
It is difficult to recall an Indian minister in modern times pushing back at the US publicly, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The pipeline for well-qualified and experienced policy economists at senior levels of government has broken, leading to a growing dearth of suitable candidates for top economist positions.
Defending its decision to raise the number of seats under the India-United Arab Emirates (UAE) air services pact, the Civil Aviation Ministry, in a note to the Cabinet Secretariat and key ministries, has said no additional points of call have been allowed to the Gulf country.
The DGCA official who wrongly assigned the code of Antonov AN-32 -- an aircraft used by the IAF -- to the SpiceJet aircraft has been suspended, report Arindam Majumder and Aneesh Phadnis.
Ajit Doval is now India's all-powerful security boss. This concentration of power disrupts our layered security system. Will it not weaken whatever remains of the power and authority of the home, defence and finance ministers? asks Shekhar Gupta.
'From the very start, PM Modi was insistent that visiting foreign leaders should be exposed to an India beyond its capital.' 'Through these experiences, he felt that the full Indian narrative would be much better understood across the world,' explains External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. A riveting excerpt from Bluekraft Digital Foundation's Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery.
Three TMC leaders Amit Mitra, Bratya Basu and Rathin Ghosh were sworn-in virtually. Mitra is unwell and both Basu and Ghosh are recuperating from COVID-19.
St John's church was set ablaze on Sunday night as protesters demanded justice for the killing of Floyd, a 46-year-old man who was pinned to the ground in Minneapolis last week by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck as he gasped for breath.
The squads of both teams took part in the pre-game show of support for civil rights activists denouncing last Sunday's shooting death of Stephon Clark and the killing of numerous other African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement in recent years.
Entry of a higher number of technocrats, an appraisal system for civil servants and the benefits of changing the financial year may feature in the PM's fourth speech.
Strengthening the portfolios of the home minister and the finance minister is a message that should not be missed, points out A K Bhattacharya.
In a video message posted on social media, the British prime minister said that he will continue to lead the United Kingdom government's response to the deadly virus, which has claimed 578 lives.
Sujatha Singh stands for the right values and quite simply, she's a "good person" who understands complex economic issues thoroughly, say her friends.
Jayapal and her groups have planned 'a massive round of protests' across the country on Saturday.
ISI chief Faiz Hameed coerced the Taliban to announce an interim government guaranteed to preserve Pakistan's control over the levers of power in Kabul, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Overlying his idealism was a hatred of war and of all things military. He gave no deep thought to politico-military matters and this prevented him from making sound security decisions.'
As of now, just about 10 lakh people, out of the total 40 lakh, who were excluded in the draft of the NRC have submitted applications for inclusion of their names in the list of Assam's citizens.
Govt gave 36,000 seats per week more than inter-ministerial group's recommendations.
Besides, less than 200 applications have been received by the authorities challenging the inclusion of the names of suspected illegal immigrants in the NRC, a list of Assam's residents, two months after a window was opened for claims and objections.
'If Khan Market today -- a neon-drenched spectacle of blingy shops and pricey eateries -- is what it is, it's not due to the dramatic shift in political dispensations, but because free-market India is another country,' notes Sunil Sethi.
A total of 2,765 posts of the civilian cadre of the Sashastra Seema Bal will be shifted to the IB command over the next year. Of these posts, 2,039 are operational.
The military will now demand further pay and promotion parity with civilians
'Why can't we make it mandatory for all IAS and IPS officers to serve in the armed forces for a year before joining service? What stops us from making it compulsory for every Member of Parliament to spend three months, immediately after taking oath, in military barracks/maybe a few nights in the bunkers on the borders, to learn and understand the life of a fauji?' wonders Tarun Vijay, MP.
Many argue that the airline could achieve its full potential if Nusli Wadia were to run it the way he does Britannia.
'The defence minister needs to focus on human resources-related issues at the same pace in 2017 as he did on acquisitions in 2016,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Maintaining that action was taken against Durga Shakti Nagpal to 'teach her a lesson' for acting against the sand mafia, an Indian Police Service body has written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to ensure justice to the young Indian Administrative Service officer.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) supporters stayed put on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Friday as the crowd swelled there, notwithstanding the Ghaziabad administration's ultimatum to vacate the UP Gate protest site where security force in large numbers was re-deployed.
Failure to take timely action against those accused of posting the video resulted in communal tension.
Kapil Mishra was one of the closest aides of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. However, in May 2017, the tides turned. A loyalist of the Aam Aadmi Party founder, Mishra shocked one and all by openly accusing him of corruption, a claim that the AAP dismissed. Since then Mishra has become one of the most prominent AAP rebels. In the face of the sit-in by Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and ministers - Satyendar Jain and Gopal Rai at Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal's office, Mishra spoke to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com and said that this is the first time in history that a sitting chief minister of a state in India has kidnapped himself.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
