No journey can give you a taste of the Indian landscape like train travel. Rajesh Karkera and Archana Masih capture vignettes on one such long journey through Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
The house in Allahabad where Amitabh Bachchan lived in many, many, years before he became THE SUPERSTAR.
The MP of Kanker, Chhattisgarh, on why local support is needed to counter the Naxals.
A month after the Dantewada massacre, young girls from the Maoist-affected region of Chhattisgarh will begin a 9-month training programme to become CRPF constables.
'These incidents of indiscipline in army units are happening with increased frequency which is a dangerous trend and is a wake up call for the senior leadership of the armed forces,' says Lieutenant General D B Shekatkar (retd).
'Because of the paucity of force, we have to be extremely creative in your ops. You can't go for an all out war,' says Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan.
'This trip will solidify India's understanding of the new kind of world leadership Obama wishes to achieve, one very different from that of George W Bush,' says Professor William Chafe.
The man who wrote two of the 20th century's greatest novels, Animal Farm and 1984, was born in Motihari. But few come to the sleepy Bihar town seeking George Orwell.
In Gujarat, the system is such that even if Narendra Modi is not there, the growth will continue. But in a place like Bihar it is different, it will still matter who is the CEO of the state,' says social scientist-economist Dr Shaibal Gupta.
A new house, an inverter for electricity and a scooty are the material things Sushil Kumar has acquired from his prize money. But what he misses most is his cycle. Archana Masih meets the first winner of Rs 5 crores on KBC at his home in Motihari, Bihar.
Sub Lieutenant Shivangi, the daughter of a village headmaster in Bihar, will conduct maritime reconnaissance and search and rescue missions.
Conrad Sangma, 35, Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Meghalaya assembly that goes to the polls on Saturday, explains the need for a fresh approach to solve the problem of insurgency in the state, the reasons for the lack of women in state politics and the need for cultural exchanges between the North-East and the rest of India.
Lieutenant General Kuldip Singh Brar (retired), who has been on the hit-list of Khalistan separatists since 1984, survived an attempt on his life in London last year. The general tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih what it is to live a life under threat and how he has not let that cow him down.
'No one is saying that the police can become the solution, the police have to become the first respondent to create a situation where other people can enter,' says Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan.
'China will do everything to hamper our ability to be a competitor.' 'China wants every country in the region to be subservient and we are the biggest stumbling block.'
'The victory is an expression of agrarian distress and social turmoil.'
'If the Indian Army is deployed aganist Naxals it would mean that the whole political system has failed,' says Lt Gen D B Shekatkar (retd).
National Security Guard Director General N P S Aulakh on how the NSG has changed after 26/11.
'Except that the population was much less.' 'I remember my uncle and family moving away from the base of a hill whenever it rained for more than a couple of days without a dry day in between.' 'Perhaps the older generations knew if it rained for more than a certain time, they must pack up to a camp or to a relative.' 'As some of the interviews of the survivors on the Malayalam television channels show, the elderly people had a premonition a tragedy would happen, and those who acted on those premonitions survived.'
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih referred to newspaper reports mentioning a considerable violation of court orders.
A year after her husband Mukesh died in a bomb blast in Mumbai, Sheela Seth and her nine-year-old son Mohit confront grief and an uncertain future, reports Archana Masih.
Young men who are injured or martyred in the line of duty have been reduced to statistics in news reports. Archana Masih reports on the injured security personnel recovering from a deadly Naxalite ambush in Chhattisgarh and looks at the lives behind those numbers.
Soma Ravi, an Indian caregiver in Ramat Gan, recounts the last 4 days in Israel and says the Indian embassy has been in constant touch.
'There are no quick fixes... The security forces can kill terrorists, but terrorism will be killed only by the people,' says Lieutenant General V G Patankar (retd).
'I am filled with hope and inspiration as I have the privilege to view this testament to Gandhi's life. He is a hero not just to India but to the world,' Obama wrote in the visitor's book.
Honorary Captain Bana Singh won the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest ranking gallantry award, for recapturing a Pakistani post on the Siachen Glacier. Living a retired life in a quiet village in Jammu & Kashmir, he makes you feel that his act of phenomenal courage was part of a soldier's day at work.
Far from civilian populations, facing the onslaught of weather, terrain and a hostile neighbour lurking in the distance, the band of young men at the Indian Air Force's most strategic radar location near the Line of Control say life is hard, but they would not have had it any other way.
27-year-old Vinod Dhar's entire family was massacred when he was just a teenager. He now has a government job and a flat alloted by the government in a township for Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu but almost a decade later, the horrors of that night remain with him. Archana Masih reports from Jammu.
On Judgement Day, Lalu Yadav ultimately paid the price for 15 years of misrule in Bihar.
Barack Obama's staff could not have chosen a better venue than Humayun's Tomb for his only cultural outing in the capital.
'Until the situation changes, I expect Washington to continue to behave the same way.'
After 10 years of inaction where no new schools were opened and no teachers recruited, one of the best indicators of a changing Bihar is a group of girls cycling to a government-run school.
'It is going to get worse if Indians continue to deny it by refusing to talk about it,' says Richard C Holbrooke.
'We are puppets. We have to go where the government takes us.' Archana Masih reports on Kashmiri Pandits facing a third migration after they fled their homeland in the late 1990s.
The Kashmiri Pandits have lost hope of returning to that place in the Kashmir valley they once called home and that is one of contemporary India's biggest tragedies. Archana Masih reports on a people callously termed as 'migrants' in their own land.
After spending 20 years in squalid camps in Jammu, the Kashmiri Pandits, who fled their native Kashmir valley to escape ethnic cleansing, will finally move into a new township. But they are not home yet. Archana Masih reports from Jammu on the torment of the Pandits in exile, which remains one of contemporary India's worst tragedies.
A farmer's son with no political lineage, K T Benny is one of the fresh faces handpicked by Rahul Gandhi in Kerala.
'In the interim, India will be confronted with anti-India feeling because Sheikh Hasina had India's support.' 'We will have to deal with it, but it will not be a permanent phenomenon.' 'There is substantial goodwill towards India which will stand us in good stead.'
It is not in the improved roads or in being able to visit the cinema and restaurants without fear or in the increased spending on education. The biggest change in Bihar is the distinct feeling of optimism -- that something good is finally happening in the state.
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