'While they were respectful of the PM, it was clear that as ministers, they owed their positions as much, if not more, to Mrs Gandhi.' 'When attacks were mounted on the PM, there was very little coordinated effort by the Congress, UPA ministers or other politicians to speak up in his favour and strongly defend him.' B K Chaturvedi, Cabinet Secretary during the early years of UPA1, reveals how the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi equation worked. A riveting excerpt from Chaturvedi's memoir, Challenges Of Governance: An Insider's View
Mayawati has accused 'Ravan' of being a BJP agent who is dividing the scheduled castes.
'The BJP will be wiped out in rural Gujarat.' 'In urban areas, its tally may come down from 55 of the 60 urban seats it won in 2012 to 35 to 40 seats this time.'
AAP candidates from Mumbai, Medha Patkar and Meera Sanyal, are poised to play a crucial and complementary role. While Patkar gives voice to the suffering of people at the grassroots, Sanyal is articulating the key principles that could build a more just and equitable society or economy, says Rajni Bakshi.
On the occasion of her breaking the world's longest hunger strike, Rediff.com reproduces this 2011 feature on the activist and her life.
In a major boost to the party ahead of next year's Assembly polls, the Trinamool Congress on Tuesday scored a landslide victory in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation bagging 114 of the 144 wards, and also won 69 of the 91 civic bodies in districts across West Bengal.
The apex court's five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said Aadhaar is meant to help benefits reach the marginalised sections of the society and takes into account the dignity of people not only from personal but also from community point of view.
Now that the Aam Aadmi Party has uploaded 'evidences' in the form of videos, it has sought to democratise the legal process as now the public can also judge. Do we find this method acceptable? Are you free to enact a trial online or publicly, placing, propagating, popularising 'evidence' to prove your point? We know that this 'evidence' may not stand in a court of law. But that does not worry the moral brigade known as the AAP, argues Apoorvanand.
'People are losing their freedom to eat, speak, write and practise their religion.' 'All that is said in the Constitution has been taken away.' 'Does every Muslim or Christian or Hindu have to say I am a patriot every morning and repeat it in the afternoon and at night?'
'Communal tension and violent mobs have been part of our country, whichever government is in power. What has happened since the BJP came into power is that individuals or group activities asserting Hindutva have become louder, more aggressive.' 'Now we are finding ourselves in a country where reasoning and thinking have no place, the power lies with the goons.' 'I find any ban, whether on what we write, what we eat, how we dress etc, absolutely abominable. They have no place in a democracy.' Shashi Deshpande on why she joined the writers' protest against the growing intolerance in India.
Deepti Priya Mehrotra, who documented Irom Sharmila's struggle for peace in Manipur in the book Burning Bright, puts the icon's electoral loss in perspective.
'They must bow their head before the people's might and start their work immediately. Now nothing can help them, but a show of sincerity and a life without cosmetic frills.' 'They don't have any option, but to succeed and prove themselves worthy of this massive victory,' says BJP MP Tarun Vijay.
Dealing with the Sirisena government in Sri Lanka, says G Ganapathy Subramaniam, is a lot easier for India than engaging with the Rajapaksa regime.
The major cause of the floods in Mumbai in 2005 and in Chennai in 2015 has been the reclamation of reservoir areas and rapid, unplanned, urbanisation.
'She hasn't done anything wrong; she fought against the bad, she fought for justice.' 'So, I know she will get justice one day.'
Iconic rights activist Irom Sharmila on the highs and lows of her long fast, why she gave it up and her plans.
'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.'
'Kejriwal has taken a leaf out of Modi's campaign of 2014 and improved upon it.' 'That suit will haunt Modi till he exits politics.' 'Of all the factors that favoured Kejriwal, the biggest was the arrogance and over-confidence of the Modi-Shah led BJP.' 'What the Congress could not do in the last two decades in Gujarat, Kejriwal did it in no time in Delhi.' 'The BJP has behaved exactly like the Congress in decoding Kejriwal's politics.'
The State is trying to curb the students movements, therefore, there are suspicions against some of the Subramanian report on education's recommendations, says Mohammad Sajjad.
On the face of it, some clauses in the new land ordinance looks pro-farmer but in reality it is not so. The problem is two-fold. The first is the vagueness of the law itself. The other problem with this ordinance is that it is against the very ethos of judicial interpretation, says Vidhan Vyas.
'You have to respect nature. You won't respect nature unless you see nature's fury.'
Over the last four days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the heads of over 50 African nations, some of whom have extremely unsavoury reputations. Meet the 10 most controversial leaders who visited Delhi this week.
After five decades of existence, the Shiv Sena's support base seems to be shifting towards the rural electorate but there it has to contend with the network of Sharad Pawar and the BJP.
'The partnership of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi has made their biggest mistake. They have been very successful for their party in the last two years, but this batting pair has made the biggest political mistake of their life so far, which is calling Kejriwal a chor. It will backfire on them.'
Anupam Kher on why he thinks the prime minister is a genuine person.
'While the government must be relentless in its efforts to curb unruly elements to ensure secular harmony and protect its goal of national development,it must not lose the moral high ground by giving in to the antics of the anti-nationalist lobby.' 'They must be countered and relegated to the dustbin of history,' says Vivek Gumaste.
South Africa is heading for polls on May 7. Shubha Singh examines how the Indian vote can make a difference in Durban
'I think the AAP is still in transition from being a movement to a political party so there is a mix of people who form the party. So there is somewhat of a overlapping and commonality of purpose.' 'Look at the way the government and party is functioning, not a single woman minister in the cabinet, or no woman member in the political affairs committee, it is all very tactical now.' 'After the 'sting' I decided to step back. I realised that my moral basis has been questioned by Kejriwal, it is truly despicable. He is around 15 years younger to me, I was aghast by his words.' AAP 'rebel' Prof Anand Kumar speaks of what went wrong with the party in the last few days in this interview with Upasna Pandey.
'We are going to see relatively soon an executive order that deals with H-1B and other temporary visas.' 'We are also going to see an executive order on undocumented people.' 'Undocumented Indians comprise the largest population growth of all undocumented people in this country.' 'Just because India is not named in this executive order doesn't mean it won't be in the future.'
Are hacker collectives like Anonymous and Legion black hats or white hats, or do they lurk in the space between the two? Dhruv Munjal reports.
'This arrest was totally unnecessary and disproportionate to the gravity of charges. What was truly required was a more measured and calculated approach, keeping in mind the strain such an action could cause to the growing bilateral relationship between these two great nations.' Indian-American organisations condemn Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade's arrest.
'There are many people like me who were kept away from Jayalalithaa.' 'There is a coterie who did not allow her to meet people.'
The new ordinance on land acquisition will allow land grabbers to deprive millions, destroy agriculture, horticulture, rivers, forests, tree cover and mangroves to extract minerals as well as ground water, without replenishment at a pace that will not leave anything for the next generation, warns activist Medha Patkar.
While Congressmen may try and give Rahul Gandhi credit for the withdrawal of the controversial ordinance on convicted lawmakers, it was the President's timely intervention that saved the day for the Congress, says Anita Katyal.
'When the world was refining itself, India was going backwards culturally with so many rape cases and other atrocities against women, children and the elderly. The growth of evil forces was very bad in the last 10 years,' says Malayalam movie star Suresh Gopi, who met Narendra Modi recently tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier in this exclusive interview.
Ironically, it was the members of the BJP (which the Indian press loves to dub as fascist) who resisted the assault on democracy and were jailed for 18 months. The RSS too played a stellar role in the resistance movement during the Emergency. Yet by some strange warped logic, the Indian media deems the Congress party with an established record of authoritarianism as a standard bearer of democracy while damning a true champion -- the BJP, says Vivek Gumaste
The CBI's case against Mulayam has been killed by politics, says Sreenivasan Jain
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.
'The Congress's allies won't be left behind in looking out for their own interests. Some will demand a bigger share of the ministerial or electoral pie, others will simply jump ship,' says T V R Shenoy.
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
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