Seeing the potential of shale gas, Reliance Industries moved early to secure a foothold in the Marcellus shale reserves in the US.
'From the time Rahul Gandhi entered the scene, I started feeling dissatisfied. No true Congressman will be able to agree with the way Rahul Gandhi functioned. He has not attained enough maturity or wisdom.' 'You cannot compare Rahul Gandhi with Narendra Modi. When you take into consideration Modi's political experience and abilities, nobody can think of projecting Rahul Gandhi against him.' 'The main culprits behind such a humiliating defeat are Veerappa Moily and P Chidambaram. It was Moily who did the maximum damage to people and the party.' T H Mustafa, one of the first Congress leaders to criticise Rahul Gandhi, speaks out in this interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt, who is accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his trips to Russia and China, notes that Moscow and New Delhi work together professionally and via a shared common approach on crucial issues.
They also voiced concerns over a double penalty being sought to be imposed on them for KG-D6 fields output not matching targets.
Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily has suggested pricking the ballooning oil bill with everything from a street theatre campaign encouraging lower fuel use, to shutting fuel stations, to increasing imports from Iran.
The AAP deliberately flouted procedures when it attempted to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi assembly on Friday, knowing that it would fall by the wayside. But Kejriwal was not perturbed as he was looking for an opportunity to opt out and the anti-graft bill was the perfect reason for doing so as it would enable him to go out in a blaze of glory and accuse the Congress and the BJP of not being serious about fighting corruption, analyses Anita Katyal.
AAP is arguing quietly that indifference, alienation have to go. These are symptoms of disempowerment. For AAP, the battle to empower people demands new engagements with the marginals and corporations, says Shiv Visvanathan.
'For now, the AAP is the conversation,' Lord Meghnad Desai tells Rediff.com's Sanchari Bhattacharya. 'Everyone is talking about the 'Delhi model'. They have made so much difference. They have changed politics.'
It's election season in Tamil Nadu and all political parties are tying themselves in knots over the banned jallikattu but none more than the BJP, says R Ramasubramanian.
Even Delhi does not have a full-time registrar of chits.
Government's reforms are too half-hearted. But Rahul Gandhi's Congress is too amateurish and inept to hold it to account.
Prakash Javadekar's one year as India's minister of state (independent charge) of environment, forests and climate change has been an unmitigated disaster, says activist Himanshu Thakkar.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley appealed to parties to rise above partisan considerations to support it.
Nitin Gokhale, national security expert and founder BharatShakti.in, tells us what the controversy is all about.
A very delayed and subdued reaction, at a time when the non-aligned world had expected a big country like India to come out in support of rights and justice. It was yet another example of the mealy mouthed approach that has come to define Indian foreign policy, says Seema Mustafa.
It is regrettable that the IB has tried to devalue the expertise available both within the concerned ministry and in the scientific community by its allegations. Governments and NGOs in many western nations have not been accused of being 'anti-national' when they put their foot down on questionable practices by cash rich agri-business companies, says Rashme Sehgal.
Demonetisation hit informal sector hard and caused job losses which was not addressed by the budget, Moily said.
The commission asks for notification to be deferred; RIL's KG-D6 pricing issue may return to Cabinet
Dhirendra Mulkalwar, one of the protestors who raised a protest banner at Essar's Mumbai headquarters, on why he joined Greenpeace's Junglistan group that is working to save India's forests.
Criticising various provisions in the proposed GST regime, Moily said it will be a "technological nightmare" and the anti-profiteering provisions in it are "far too draconian."
'A senior US diplomat last week asked me when things will go back to normal. I had to tell her that if normalcy meant getting back these perks, it is not going to happen for a very long time, if ever at all,' says Mohan Guruswamy. 'For the Indian public now is outraged that US diplomats have enjoyed all these winking at the rulebook.'
India and Japan's effort to form a multilateral group of liquefied natural gas buyers to avoid paying higher prices for the fuel is laudable as an objective but is unlikely to be effective immediately.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
If the AAP wins 20 to 40 Lok Sabha seats, which is conceivable unless it botches up on governance in Delhi, it will become a significant bloc comparable in influence to or even bigger than several major regional parties, feels Praful Bidwai.
'It is good for the country, but it is not good for a politician... What we call impatience is actually desperation to needing something NOW.' 'Our politics is restricted by one factor; that our Parliament is full of villages. 40% of the country now lives in cities but only 25% of Parliament is coming from the cities.'
Eleven things we learnt about Rahul Gandhi's style of functioning from former Union minister Jayanthi Natarajan's November 214 letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
A day after deciding to nearly double natural gas prices to $8, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday hinted that power and fertiliser units may get gas at subsidised rates to keep electricity and urea costs down.
Opposition said saying it lacked vision and road map to execute ideas.
A Texas company will submit a report by June on whether a company controlled by RIL 'stole' natural gas from the wells where ONGC is contracted to operate in the KG basin, as alleged by ONGC.
Prakash Javadekar enjoys being information and broadcasting and parliamentary affairs minister, but heading the green ministry is turning out to be thornier than he had expected.
Congress gets into the opposition groove but still has miles to go, says Saroj Nagi.