'In today's situation, it is not going to help anyone's case if they try to politically contest with the BJP on ideological issues.' 'Instead, it is best is to swim along the tide, present the more acceptable face of the cultural Hindu, but not be a political Hindu as the BJP or Mr Modi is.'
If Kejriwal wins the Delhi election, then most regional parties will copy Kejriwal's do's and don'ts of jugaad to win an election against the Modi-Shah juggernaut, reports Sheela Bhatt.
'Teaching lessons is the objective behind every school.' 'For the moment, a state seems intent to teach a lesson -- that students of Classes 4, 5 and 6 can wage war against the mighty Indian nation,' says Krishna Prasad.
'The BJP will take time to come to power in Andhra.'
'The Modi Model we see now is still the old Gujarat Model.' 'But with an acknowledgement that governing India is more challenging than governing Gujarat,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Amit Shah and his fellow travellers need to realise that India was divided because of competitive communalism of forces like Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, prodded, aided and abetted by the colonial power,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The BJP was looking at one or two disgruntled guys to see whether it can destabilise the government.' 'When the BJP does not win a state, it uses these back hand methods.'
'Mr Modi's next challenger/s will need to invent a new politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'How many Indian parents, still alive, really have documents of, their parents's date and place of birth? Not more than 27% of still alive Indians have got birth certificates,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
'We are not a dictatorship. If the people do not desire some law, it is impossible for any government to implement it,' says BJP leader Chandra Kumar Bose.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com lists 11 Modi flagship schemes that may have been gamechangers in the Lok Sabha election.
'When the story of Elections 2019 is told by an independent writer, the BJP's role in lowering electoral standards will be etched in indelible ink,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'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.
'The people of India have not only challenged the ruling dispensation with the constitution, they have also opened the eyes of the leadership that sits in the Opposition.'
'Facing foes with a common intent is not something Modi-Shah's BJP has done before,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Every seat the Congress gets above 100 will keep pushing the Modi-Shah BJP lower in the dangerous sub-200 zone,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'I suggest Rahul Bajaj come out in the open and give us his own white paper on the perceived sense of fear that he thinks haunts corporate India,' says Dr Sudhir Bisht.
'These guys did not even issue an apology to me and were taken back into the party.' 'They were reinstated on the grounds that they will contribute to the Congress campaign.'
'Just as the monkey god needed a Jambavan to prod him into realising his superpowers, so did the poll panel need a poke from the Supreme Court into remembering it had an armoury of powers at its disposal to stop the infractions,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Let me stick my neck out and say that Tamil Nadu will keep alive its reputation for landslide election verdicts, with the DMK front winning at least 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats going to the polls in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Modi isn't going to voters on his track record but on the fear of the terrorist across the border and the Muslims within. It's a battle on his terms, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Vajpayeeji's BJP was democratic.' 'It was a BJP that belonged to its party workers. Every worker, every member was an Atal Bihari.' Today's BJP belongs to businessmen.' 'Modi and Amit Shah have reduced the BJP to a two-man party.'
'The Modi government thinks that once the CAA protests are over, they will bring in the NPR that will help to get the NRC.'
A realistic assessment will tell us that not much has changed between India and Pakistan; the relationship remains as fraught as before with little prospect of reconciliation, notes Ajai Shukla.
'You should raise your voice even at the cost of being called a deshdrohi. 'This country is built because of the raising of voices of the people and no one can silence such voices,' says Kannan Gopinathan who resigned from the IAS to protest against revocation of Article 370 in Kashmir.
'In the CBI's history, a situation like this has never ever occurred.'
India is mushrooming with Deve Gowda wannabes because being a former prime minister is better than being a former chief minister, says Shekhar Gupta.
The jobless armies of youthful India are getting angrier and desperate, warns Shekhar Gupta.
'The debate, by being mostly in Hindi, lost much of its educative relevance to the southern states.' 'All the prime minister's debating skills and oratorical prowess went over the heads of the South Indian audience,' points out B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'Wayanad has become famous because of Rahul Gandhi.'
'There's nothing in the 2019 campaign air, the chunavi hawa that tells you it's a wave election, for anyone,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
'No one institution can cleanse it: Not the courts, government or activists.' 'And least of all the Indian Police Service,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
'If you look through the optics of BJP leader Kapil Mishra, he was standing with a deputy commissioner of police while giving a hate speech.' 'Immediately, the message goes down that the police is 'with us' so let's start rioting.'
'Breaking down silos and ensuring a more integrated governance process is just as important to performance.' 'It has been a major priority in the last six years, especially in national security,' External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar points out when delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture-2020: India and the Post-Covid World.
'Poor home work, and a subsequent loss of nerve.' 'This sums up the Modi government's current travails, the stall in key sectors, fading momentum, irritability,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'The economy of Kashmir has collapsed.'
By ending the Shiv Sena's political untouchability, the Congress is creating a level playing ground for itself in the political battle of Hindu identity, explains Sheela Bhatt.
'As demonetisation showed us, the Shah-Modi duo can take big risks.' 'Risking economic damage for political benefit, however, is one thing, stoking old fires in complicated Assam is another', warns Shekhar Gupta.
The 3,000-strong force, plus its highly trained dog squad, is responsible solely for the protection of one person: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi.
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