Some members of the Obama administration have worried that Pakistan's heightened anxieties about India might lead Islamabad to take reckless measures, so they have wanted New Delhi to pursue more diplomatic engagement with Islamabad.
Natwar Singh's book is un-illuminating, largely self-justificatory, often contradictory, and at times tendentious. He is too preoccupied with depicting himself as a victim of the Congress party's machinations, says Praful Bidwai.
It is unconscionable to choose between Sardar Patel, who united India physically, and Indira Gandhi, who gave meaning, content and pride to the unity of the nation and became a martyr at the altar of national unity, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Saudi-Pakistan nuclear weapons cooperation is meant to sound alarm bells in Washington, reminding the Obama administration that its overtures to Iran would have serious negative consequences in terms of its ties with its closest allies in the region, says Ambassador Talmiz Ahmad. Exclusive to Rediff.com
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will soon get around to reworking their organisational set-up and administrative priorities to regain lost ground in the wake of the Delhi electoral debacle, but there's third course available to them as well. That is to introduce the presidential form of government, which prime ministers Indira Gandhi and A B Vajpayee flirted with before abandoning it. Will Modi go further than them? N Sathiya Moorthy analyses the scenario.
How will the return of a majority government at the Centre, the new India-US friendship and the Mangalyaan triumph change India?
62 mass murders carried out with firearms across 30 US states. Of these, 12 were in schools, 19 at workplaces, the other 31 cases took place in shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings and military bases. The average age of the killers was 35, with the youngest only 11 years old. B S Raghavan on how the killings will continue until America confronts the urgent need for gun control.
Two skyscrapers were decimated the day 2,996 died, one and a half decades ago. George Joseph profiles the monument that has replaced them.
While the Rafale deal seems to be the main order of business during French President Francois Hollande's visit, other aspects could help sweeten the deal, says Claude Arpi.
'Is Trump going to play a mediating role? Can he play a mediating role? It's out of the question.' 'Kashmir is an Indian responsibility.'
Cos ask US treasury to discuss data localisation norms with Indian officials at all platforms the two countries would meet, including G-20, US-India Strategic Dialogue, and IMF Annual Meet.
The police is investigating whether it was 'accidental or deliberate'.
Summers dogged by controversies over past views
More people will be literate, on the Internet, linked to the national identification scheme and likely to receive electricity, especially from alternative-energy sources.
A definitive guide to the movers and shakers who sit at the helm of the Asian sports boom.
Bloodbath in Gaza continued unabated today with Israel and Hamas refusing to back down in the conflict that has killed over 660 Palestinians and 31 Israelis, even as US Secretary of State John Kerry said his ceasefire negotiations in Jerusalem were making progress.
'How come with Nehru at the helm, India missed so many buses? He had such unchallenged power that he could have taken the country in any direction he wanted. The sad conclusion is inescapable that Nehru let things drift in true Hamletian ambivalence,' says B S Raghavan.
Indians in and around Ferguson, Missouri, tell Arthur J Pais and Suman Guha Mozumder what it's like to be caught in the thick of America's racial volcano eruption
At no other time has a single meeting of the leaders of two democracies been so critical and hazardous.
The Politburo Standing Committee -- the most powerful body in China -- is unveiled, but in a break from Communist party convention, no successor to Xi Jinping is named.
Even as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif headed to the United States for the 70th session of the UNGA and for bilateral meetings to be held on the sidelines of the multilateral summit, back home all that is expected of him is to internationalise the Kashmir issue, or as Pakistan puts it, the 'Kashmir dispute'.
'Diplomatic engagement will continue even as India keeps all its options open with respect to discretely targeting the Pakistani military and its terrorist proxies.'
One Chinese lie has been finally nailed this time by a team of Indian scientists who provide irrefutable evidence that rice did originate in India, a fact contested by China.
'The Naga Hills region, Nagaland and Manipur, have had the most uncaring and corrupt state governments with little to show on the ground despite the nation's highest per capita development expenditure,' says Mohan Guruswamy.
The differences between the US and China over rival free trade agreements being floated by them threatened to derail the APEC Summit which got off to a colourful start in Beijing China on Monday.
'The real test will be in defence-related deals, for instance the Javelin anti-tank missile: Is the US willing to co-develop something with India, on terms that will support the 'Make in India' initiative? Is there defence technology transfer? Or will it dump old junk on India?' asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
'These ISIS terrorists want to smash Western civilisation, smash India. For the time being though, their main target would be the US and Europe.'
'They don't always agree with our governments, their teachers or their parents, but it is the conviction of their ideas, and their determination to share them with the world that, I believe, is one of the greatest sources of hope for our planet.' 'The colonisation of space, understanding the very building blocks of matter and the universe, utilising our understanding of the human genome to conquer disease -- these are the tasks waiting for a fellowship of minds to realise new triumphs in our collective destiny.'
Enabling labour to become more globally mobile can produce higher remittances with powerful 'brain gain' dividends.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a stunning entry into the top 10 list of Twitter users with a vast following, rocketing to the #2 spot.
'One of the great assets that India has is its enormous intellectual content, enormous intellectual developmental content, and some of the things we need to be working on are unmanned systems, for example, the enormous opportunities for us to jointly partner and develop -- not simply sell our equipment to India -- but actually partner and develop in areas like drones, areas like advanced aircraft and even areas around certain missile systems, where we can have a win-win.'
'The issue of the larger homeland of Nagalim, the dream of the Nagas to hold sway over swathes of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, is just that, a dream.' 'The NSCN has been told categorically that the government is not going to concede on this issue.'
'The US wants Modi to succeed because we want India to succeed. For our part, when India thinks of its partners in the world, we want it to think of the US first. That means positioning our country as the preferred provider of the key inputs that can help to propel India's rise.' 'The meeting between Modi and Obama is, and must be, an opportunity for true strategic dialogue -- not a scripted exchange of talking points, but an open discussion of the big questions. What kind of world do we want to live in? What are our true priorities? And most importantly, why does this partnership still matter?'
'India and China have to make concrete progress with regard to the border issue, addressing the trade deficit, and facilitating people-to-people interactions. This has to happen in the next two, three years.' China expert Tansen Sen tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com how India and China can take their relations to the next level.
As Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah form a joint government after contesting the presidential election against each other, Prakash Bhandari reports from Kabul on the problems facing the new, US-brokered arrangement.
'If the RSS should be saluted for choosing such a scholarly statesman to address its highly trained cadre, one must also praise Pranab Da's sagacity for having gracefully accepting the invitation, thus disapproving any ideological apartheid,' says former BJP MP Tarun Vijay.
'India is no longer the India of the '70s and the '80s.' 'It's a large country with the fastest growing economy.' 'In working with India, you just can't go and humiliate the nation publicly.' USIBC President Mukesh Aghi tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com about how he advises American companies to do business with India, what he thinks of Modi's government and the way forward for the India-US relationship.
'Secretiveness and the element of surprise in announcing decisions marks the Modi style of diplomacy. From being a voluble politician, he became a reticent statesman... But the diplomatic dance is performed on thin ice and his adroitness is still to be proved,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Japanese prime minister's visit to the memorial in Hawaii, the spot that was bombed 75 years ago, shows that it is possible for two powerful former enemies to transcend recriminatory impulses, observes Rajaram Panda.
'India had nothing to gain by the talks except for some brownie points from the US for being reasonable. Pakistan desperately needed the talks to get arms and money from the Americans,' says T P Sreenivasan.
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