Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should opt for an honourable exit by resigning from the top post -- in the wake of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's outburst against the Union government's ordinance on convicted legislators -- believes Bharatiya Janata Party's senior leader Arun Jaitley.
'Could the Chinese have taken a leaf out of our book?' 'That their unprecedented build-up is their attempt at coercive diplomacy with India?' 'And if so, what is it that they could be expecting as a quid pro quo?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
What the Indian economy looks like next January will influence her view on India, not her genetics, notes Shekhar Gupta.
When BJP leaders, including Mr Modi's number two, Amit Shah, use the pandemic to launch an assault on state governments run by opposition parties, or to topple them, they are exploiting a grave crisis in cynical political self-interest, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Indian secularism doesn't deserve a tombstone. It needs a new shrine,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
Coronavirus is the biggest story of our lives and a billion plus people expect us to be around, watching, reporting, editing, recording this for posterity and blowing the whistle to draw attention to injustices and State failures, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
Delhi was just one riot. Add Bengal, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and you can count a few scores dead. It could, regrettably, be just the beginning of a very long, dark phase for India, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Parekh says drafting new I-T law is hindered by the lack of experience.
In the mid-1980s, India and the US struggled to arrive at sufficient confidence for Washington to even sell a supercomputer to India for monsoon prospecting. Now, the most sensitive military technologies, data, and intelligence resources are being shared. This would not have happened without that one, big deal that changed the fundamentals of India-US relations, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Ladakh is a tiny salami-slice issue.' 'The big one for China is Arunachal Pradesh, more than 83,000 sq km.' 'Do they imagine they can grab any of this by force?' 'In the 21st century, nursing those thoughts only means you need to get your heads examined.' 'It isn't going to happen,' declares Shekhar Gupta.
'Flypasts, bands, helicopters dropping flowers over hospitals treating coronavirus patients are cute ideas for an Akshay Kumar film.' 'But when lakhs of workers at the lowest rung of the employment ladder would still be walking back home, this is the true 2020 equivalent of 'let them eat cake,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'If the Singh government was characterised by policy paralysis, this one is afflicted by hyperactivism, sans a roadmap,' says Yogendra Yadav.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Is it sustainable?' 'Or is it like an overdose of a medicine that saves your life in the short run but kills you through long-lasting side-effects?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Delhi's air is a desperate problem, but some of the solutions have been too desperate and unthinking.
'Too much energy these three years has been invested in turning the party into an election-winning machine.' 'To recover its mojo, the Modi government needs a more impressive set of economic figures to flaunt,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Will the age of majority be decided on a case-by-case basis by judges?' 'Does a 24-year-old woman still need "care, protection and guidance" and only from parents?' 'Is a Facebook post enough to declare a person a dangerous radical?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
The strategic success of the surgical strikes has not matched their brilliant tactical achievement, says Shekhar Gupta.
We should have anticipated it on August 5 last year, when we made the big changes in J&K. Amit Shah left nothing to chance when he told Parliament that 'we will bring back Aksai Chin even at the cost of our lives'. 'Then, there were the new maps, objections to the CPEC going through Indian territory, the weather reports.' A broad territorial status quo had existed in Ladakh-Aksai Chin since 1962. India made its intention to change this public, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'The handling of the pandemic, under this totally constitutional and legal three-level dictatorship, has begun to show its downside,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
'You can't make the poor rich overnight.' 'Nor can you fly millions in planes.' 'But remember that word: Empathy.' 'Who in the BJP is speaking in that language to these millions?' 'Someone putting an arm of understanding, warmth, comfort around them?', asks Shekhar Gupta.
Budget 2018 bears imprints of a government unsure of second term with clear majority, says Shekhar Gupta.
'While I am personally pained at the raids on Dr Roy's home, I want to ask five questions of those crying themselves hoarse over the attack on the "freedom of the press",' says Sudhir Bisht.
'And Indians are loving it,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Four decades of federal evolution made India more secure, but coronavirus is reversing that. Modi's central government has tasted power again and is unlikely to give it up, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Lower rates are only part of the solution and sometimes not the right solution at all.'
'Our drains are not filled with bodies, our hospitals not run out of beds.' 'That good news, or absence of expected bad news, is the truth that so many in the international community, and also within India, seem unable to handle,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
It is bound to fail like the earlier ones, again causing Pakistan enormously more damage than to India, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Sukh Ram and Raja were charged with corruption during their tenure as telecom ministers. Sukh Ram was convicted while Raja has been acquitted. One had cash found under his bed; in the case of the other the trial judge mockingly asks: Where is the money? And if there's no money, where is the corruption? So, pronounced innocent. Sukh Ram is a Brahmin. 'Maybe he strayed just that one time, people like that aren't usually corrupt.' And Raja is a Dalit. 'Can you expect any better?' What race is in some places, caste is in India, says Shekhar Gupta.
The humility with which the BJP deals with these 10 lessons will determine the outcome of 2019, says Shekhar Gupta.
To make Swachh Bharat a people's movement, Modi had also initiated a chain by inviting nine eminent personalities, including cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, industrialist Anil Ambani along with several actors to spread awareness on cleanliness.
'He has a gift none of his eight predecessors, from Manmohan Singh to Rajiv Gandhi, had: Being able to speak directly and convincingly to a large enough section of Indians who will take his word for gospel,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'A very vast majority of us will catch it at some point, about 8 out of 10 won't feel much worse than a common cold's nuisance, if at all, but some will die.' 'A very, very vast majority, at least about 98 per cent of those infected, if not more, under any circumstances, will live through it,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
The winds of nationalism laden with religion will now yield to those of concern over the stalled economy, unemployment, and a general malaise and unhappiness, predicts Shekhar Gupta.
'That Modi and the BJP can continue to treat the rising and expanding middle class this way shows that they have gamed its mind quite perfectly,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
'No country or society ever prospered or remained secure by marginalising more than one-sixth of its own,' warns Shekhar Gupta.
'This army has lost Pakistan's territory, ideology, financial and intellectual capital, ruined its institutions, democracy, the respect for its passport and, like it or not, reduced its status to a globally acknowledged university of jihad,' says Shekhar Gupta.
After months of negotiations, an entity owned by Pune-based property developer Panchshil Realty and US-based private equity (PE) company Blackstone has bought a majority stake in Express Towers.
'The Kashmir issue has become internationalised after nearly half a century.' 'India, not Pakistan, has done so pro-actively,' says Shekhar Gupta.
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