Can the Election Commission step up to the plate and exert its Constitutional powers with non-partisan conviction, asks Mitali Saran.
'Fighting terrorists is one thing. Fighting insurgents is worse. Fighting a population is worst of all,' says Mihir S Sharma.
Can compassion, common courtesy or an 'emotional connect' win seats in the harsh realpolitik of UP, a state riddled with divisions of caste and religion, and confronted with a seemingly impregnable BSP-SP alliance? asks Sunil Sethi.
'All statue-building is an exercise in hubris, but Mr Adityanath's enterprise begs a question: Can a state with rampant child malnutrition and 325 children dying in a Gorakhpur hospital afford Rama's benediction?' asks Sunil Sethi.
'Valmiki has not written anything about Hanuman's caste.' 'I want to clarify that Hanuman was not a Vanar, but an Adivasi.'
'My passion remains pushing for probity in public life and I shall continue my fight,' S N Shukla tells Virendra Singh Rawat.
'Till the time we do not remove fear in the minds of Muslims of India, how will we achieve peace?' asks the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Gorakhpur, Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, who says he will resign as a member of the Uttar Pradesh assembly if any Indian Muslim of his constituency is evicted from the country during the Citizenship (Amendment) Act exercise.
'The CM was in Gorakhpur when this attempt to murder took place on my brother.' 'I waited for two days to see what action the police takes, but after 48 hours, the police has not even questioned Paswan.'
'As a student of history, I am no pessimist, but regardless of which party/coalitions comes to power on May 23, the space for secularism, pluralism and minority rights has shrunk significantly,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Our country does not need an NRC. We need to improve our economy which is in a bad condition.'
'The involvement of policemen in either committing the crime or shielding the accused in Kathua and Unna points to a crumbling civil and moral order,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'The 2019 battle is a battle for the kind of India that we want to live in.' The Congress's long history is pockmarked with sins great and small, but Mr Gandhi has the advantage of representing a new generation with a relatively clean slate, and a chance to redefine contemporary perception,' says Mitali Saran.
When a university allows a small group of students to prevent classes being held; when the professor selected to hold those classes gives up and goes back to his hometown; what conclusion can be drawn, asks Jyoti Punwani.
'BJP ministers in Chhattisgarh were arrogant'
'When Yogi took over, in the first few months he went after the criminals.' 'Everybody thought he will do it, cutting across party, caste divisions.' 'Gradually, the situation started slipping out of his hand.'
'Politicians have long appropriated the hero turned god as their totem, but never before with the ferocious intensity of the present regime,' notes Arundhuti Dasgupta.
'Caste-based power politics made him think that he can get away with murder.'
'This is obvious to everyone except those in denial; it is a national shame.' 'To that extent, blaming any particular government is an insufficient response,' argues Mihir S Sharma.
One would not think that a Facebook status or a tweet could land you in jail, at least not in India -- the world's largest democracy. However, the reality is a lot more brutal in India, which has a shameful history of locking up its citizens for dissenting viewpoints. According to Mint, at least 50 people have been arrested through 2017 and 2018 for posts on social media. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com presents some of the most prominent cases.
'BJP leaders might ponder the all-consuming arrogance that grips the Modi-Shah combine a year ahead of the next general election,' says Sunil Sethi.
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
'Get lost from here, you scoundrel. Nobody in this administration will help you,' the CM shouted at me.
'If Mr Modi and Mr Shah have made a poisonous, polarising campaign their brahmastra for 2019, Mamata Banerjee is showing them its limitations,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
'There are enough funds to solve this problem.'
With the state police pursuing only notorious criminals, petty thugs continue to prey on victims.
The jobless armies of youthful India are getting angrier and desperate, warns Shekhar Gupta.
'What will work is not fear of the law, but of real and swift prosecution under the law.' 'That can now be a possibility thanks to the Supreme Court judgment.'
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
'Across the country -- in Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Manipur, Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal -- men were lynched on suspicion of being thieves by ordinary people armed with rods and sticks.' 'But none of these lynchings made big news.' 'None of these lynchings were cow/beef-related.' 'The perpetrators were unknown people, not so-called gau rakshaks.' 'So why were these instances of mob violence considered less newsworthy than cow-related lynchings?' asks Jyoti Punwani.
Ravi Kishan, the BJP's candidate, is an outsider. The BSP-SP candidate is from the powerful Nishad community. Yogi faces a tough task in ensuring that the Gorakhpur seat, which he represented from 1998 to 2017, stays with the BJP.
'Extravagant new promises can buy him time, but far from solving the problem, they compound the risk.' 'His main alternative is to stress not aspirations, but resentments.' 'He has already de-emphasised aspirational appeals: Nothing has been heard for over two years of the coming of achhe din,' points out James Manor.
'You can't go on creating division and rhetoric of hate.' 'It comes to roost. We are seeing the first glimpses of that in the state elections.'
'There is core BJP support on the Hindutva line. It will continue.' 'Along with that, the BJP is ready to play the OBCs trifurcation card to its benefit.' 'If you see the post-Kairana result, the BJP spokespersons and IT cell have already begun talking about Hindu unity against Muslim unity, Ram vs Allah.'
More than 25 years after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, another generation proclaims its commitment to building a Ram temple.
'Nobody in AMU supports Jinnah's two-nation theory.' 'It is shameful we are debating Jinnah and not education or employment.'
'There is no remorse over the Dadri lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq or of Pehlu Khan by cow vigilante groups.' 'But should you not have remorse for those who came to kill them?' 'They were Hindus. Do you accept that?' 'That to kill one Pehlu, 20 Hindus have become murderers.' Rajdeep Sardesai in conversation with Ravish Kumar.
'I say Modi was India's last chance.' 'Because the kind of work this government has done -- I'm talking about physical delivery -- is fantastic, like no time in our history.'
Donald Trump, Hardik Patel, Kangana Ranuat... The year 2017 wouldn't have been the same if it weren't for these personalities and many more. As we herald in 2018, here's a look at the faces and stories which left an indelible mark on us.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
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