While he has plenty of critics at home, Rajan is a favourite among foreign investors and has been credited for bringing inflation under control.
Even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014, Subramanian Swamy was agitating for Rajan's removal.
Vat Vrikshya -- banyan tree in Sanskrit -- helps tribal women, with absolutely zero formal education, set up businesses.
In a nation divided by many things, the 12-digit unique identity number is holding lives to ransom.
Modi, who is undertaking his first visit to China as prime minister, will reach the ancient city of Xi'an, the home town of President Xi Jinping, for a summit meeting, an unusual departure from normal protocol and seen as a reciprocal gesture by the Chinese leader who was hosted by Modi in Ahmedabad when he visited India in September last year.
'Cultural property crimes have been linked, by the United Nations and others, to terrorism.' 'These links show the perpetrators to be associated with major criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS.
Sadly, the attitude and ada that makes Rekha so timeless is dumbed down in a role and film so behind its time, rues Sukanya Verma after watching Super Nani.
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
'The reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have attended the President's iftar was not merely to break a fast with the faithful, but more importantly to broker an understanding with India's second largest set of citizens,' says Shehzad Poonawalla.
Though the list of superstitious beliefs is long, often dissolving distinctions of class, caste, religion and education, Karnataka's anti-superstition bill is seen as a big step ahead.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
Members of all parties condemned the killings in the name of cow.
'Is there a connection between the way we pitched the entire issue of Udta Punjab's censorship and the apologetic, full-of-very-specific-answers tone of the movie?' 'Maybe it's just me, but as an Indian liberal, I am more scared of us liberals than I am of the average Indian conservative bloke,' says Sreehari Nair.
All those of us who care about books should welcome the appointment, as head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, of Yellapragada Sudarshan Rao. This is not because Rao has so far distinguished himself as a writer about "history and tourism management", which is the department of Kakatiya University in Warangal he headed before retiring to head an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed project to "write history from a nationalist perspective and popularise Sanskrit", two aims which naturally go together for the RSS.
Each 'adarsh village' should have piped drinking water, connectivity to the main road, electricity supply to all households, library, telecom and broadband connectivity including CCTVs in public areas. Emphasis will also be on e-governance, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
'In all likelihood, the Congress will fall short in Gujarat.' 'The Modi-Amit A Shah duo will hold on to the state for the BJP,' predicts Sudhir Bisht.
If an FIR had been registered by the Pen police -- instead of a mere entry in the station diary -- an investigation could have taken place and the body might have been identified as Sheena's, leading to the case being cracked much earlier.
'What we see here is puppetry. The string is with the BJP.' 'All the puppets here are dancing to the direction the BJP pulls the strings.'
'No civilised nation can thrive if it is possessed with the spirit of Hindutva.'
'Benares has always encouraged healthy debate where disagreement and dissent was never frowned upon. Today, the people are faced with a situation where a political opponent is not being allowed to give election speeches and is being physically attacked.' 'We are going to hand over power to a person who has a reputation of being dictatorial, who does not brook dissent and is known to be vindictive to his opponents,' author Kashinath Singh tells Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal.
Devdutt Pattanaik responds to the decision by Penguin to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus: An Alternative History.
'What was predictable, but entirely missed by Modi's strident critics, is that the excessive and intemperate demonisation of Modi allowed him to assume his own metaphor -- the underdog, the martyr, the marginalised,' says Dr Aseem Shukla.
Sheena Bora may be the latest of India's 'gone girls' but the list is too long to enumerate, says Sunil Sethi
'What has he done for the state and the people?' 'The state has witnessed extraordinary problems. Where was he then?' 'Has he spoken about any issues or taken a stand?'
'Genuine secularism cannot be built on the backs of Hindus alone.' 'In a pluralistic society every religion is duty bound to respect the rights and sentiments of the others.' 'Vande Mataram was a casualty of minorityism. Bharat Mata Ki Jai cannot be allowed to go the same way,' says Vivek Gumaste.
Rahul Gandhi has taken the fight to the Modi government, feels Milan Vaishnav. Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.
'There will be greater communalisation. He talks about development, but his people tell his critics to go to Pakistan and brand Muslims as 'butchers'. This is the true colour of the BJP.' 'He deliberately does not stop them because that is his real agenda; he wants to make sure that the Hindu votes come to the BJP,' says senior journalist Kalpana Sharma. Ritu Jha/Rediff.com listens in.
Meet Cassie de Pecol, a 27-year-old traveller from Connecticut, United States, who visited 196 countries in 18-and-a-half months, making her the fastest person to visit every country in the world.
'People on both sides of the Hindutva debate need to read and understand the texts first,' Bibek Debroy, translator of the unabridged Mahabharata, tells Kanika Datta as he gets started on a similar project for the Ramayana.
Nikhil Siddhartha talks about his new film Karthikeya
On Tuesday, a judge in the US denied a request by Aakash Dalal's attorney to have his trial sent to another district and conducted under a different judge since the adverse publicity the case had gathered in the present court area in the Bergen county of New Jersey. Arthur J Pais reports.
A clear aim, knowledge, hard work and perseverance spells success: President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.
'It was only relatively recently that Subhash Kapoor was able to secure the sources in India, Afghanistan and Cambodia, that allowed him to get the really highest level objects, and that helped propel him in recent years up the ranks.'
Rediff.com's Rajesh Karkera shares his impressions from the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India's landmark artistic extravaganza.
Director Matt Brown tells Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com what it was about The Man Who Knew Infinity that made him persevere for a decade to turn the book into a film.
The Unnao gold hunt is an exercise in softening Hindu sentiments in the bigger dig for votes in Uttar Pradesh in 2014
'The beef fest is about an individual's freedom to wear what he wants and eat what he wants. The students were protesting against the state interfering with their personal liberties.' 'Everybody has the right to air his or her opinion and lead a life they want. Nobody has any right to put restrictions on others. What we need is tolerance but what we see is intolerance.' Deepa Nisanth, a lecturer who backed Kerala's beef fest, on why she supported the students in their protest.
Why are far right Hindu organisations growing in strength? Why is there a rising subscription to Neo-Wahabism, the Saudi Arabian version of contemporary Islam?
How Shivani Gupta bounced back from a major accident is sure to inspire you.
If the government thinks that they will be able to control it, then they're either fooling themselves or have no clue about the power of viral media.
