'Modi's idea of India is to make it less liberal, less tolerant and a less accommodative of diversity.' 'We are headed, if Modi continues, to become an ill liberal democracy.' 'Modi is not Vajpayee. Vajpayee was fundamentally decent, tolerant and fair. He played by the rules of the game. Modi is a different story.'
'The situation is in real danger of swinging back to the fearful days of the 1990s, primarily for want of a well thought out action plan in New Delhi.'
Security will be a consideration, as would protocol, but given Modi's penchant for the unconventional, it should not come as a surprise if he indeed decides to attend the ceremony in Kabul, says Ramesh Ramachandran.
With the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party seat-sharing talks deadlocked over the latter's insistence on getting more seats to contest the assembly polls, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Sunday said he is against breaking the alliance but party workers feel the ally's "body language is anti-Congress".
'The BJP has latched on to the idea of nationalism, but the nationalism they advocate is not nationalism as we have understood it since the time of the freedom movement.' 'This is not secular nationalism, it is Hindu nationalism.' 'It is a form of nationalism that is exclusionary and it tends to conflate national interest with the government.' 'So, if you disagree with the government, for example, on surgical strikes or demonetisation, you are anti-national or holder of black money.'
'She is tough. She can be stern. She can be unpleasant. Rajiv was none of these things.' 'The Congress cannot survive without the Gandhi family. If Sonia were to quit, their Lok Sabha seats would drop from 44 to four.' K Natwar Singh shares his bitterness about the Nehru family with Rashme Sehgal.
The biggest achievement of the Modi government in the past one year was it could bring positivity in the minds of people and industry, says V P Nandakumar, executive chairman of the Manappuram Finance Ltd, in an interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
Congress gets into the opposition groove but still has miles to go, says Saroj Nagi.
You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people, Bahukutumbi Raghavan tells Sheela Bhatt
'You have a chance to use this massive mandate to push through life changing reforms, transform India into a superpower because our nation's biggest strength are its people, and we the people are the most hardworking industrious and entrepreneurial the world has ever seen.' 'Arm us with a society which lives without fear, a governance where business can be conducted smoothly without greasing palms, instill in this great nation a sense of pride once again. Let this nation be bigger than you and the party.' Suparn Verma's impassioned appeal to Narendra Modi.
The BJP government is no better than the Congress -- as wretched and anti-people. In addition, it is explicitly and aggressively communal, says Venkatesh B Athreya, in a hard-hitting interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'What if Modi becomes the fascist the leftists paints him as? What if he does suspend the Constitution and declares himself the ruler, with support from the army? What exactly will you do, Mr Leftie?' asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
The Manmohan Singh government's rush to pass the Food Security Bill reflects extreme paucity of logic and action, says Neeta Kolhatkar
The DMK still wants to look elsewhere for excuses to its electoral debacle, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rajeev Srinivasan on how Indians are satisfied with illusions, not reality.
'Both nations have a common problem: A rampaging, jingoistic and hostile China which is making substantial territorial claims. In the long run, Japan and India are going to be the victims of Chinese aggression -- so they might as well hang together to contain China,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
Since 2004 the Congress has hung onto power in a situation in which it was on track to be out of power. In each case, it effectively gamed the system through Constitutional coups, argues columnist Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
Despite the recent electoral reverses, Rahul is getting ready to walk the fire once more. The question is whether he will get burned or burnished in the process, says Saroj Nagi.
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
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