'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
A realistic assessment will tell us that not much has changed between India and Pakistan; the relationship remains as fraught as before with little prospect of reconciliation, notes Ajai Shukla.
China is now the most significant strategic concern in Washington, as in most of the world's capitals, especially the democracies. Today, strategic autonomy has acquired a sharper definition: To ward off the Chinese challenge to India's territorial integrity, sovereignty and regional stature, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The 13-page joint statement issued after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's annual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin shows the breadth and depth of relations between the two countries and the trust factor that has been constant element behind it.
'She preserved national unity against great odds.'
'Chaotic prison breaks, mission misadventure gone horribly wrong, eye-popping surprises, zingers and zany action keeps viewers joyously glued to their chairs,' says Sukanya Verma.
Varsha Bhosle salutes that effervescent icon of Indian cinema, Dev Anand.
'The Himmatsinghji Report is still 'missing'.' 'It is a great loss for the knowledge of India's borders.' 'It would have an immense value at a time China is bound to shift its attention to other border fronts in the Himalayas,' notes Claude Arpi.
The perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack, who shot dead 166 people, had confessed to details that should have been enough to hang him, but Pakistan enjoyed his anti-India rhetoric and let him spread his tentacles. A revealing excerpt from Khaled Ahmed's Pakistan's Terror Conundrum.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the nation on the eve of 71st Republic Day.
The Dera Sacha Sauda chief and the three others convicted last Friday in the case appeared before the court through video conferencing.
Prime Minister Modi made a strategic blunder of Nehruvian proportions -- presuming no war can happen now, and the Chinese won't be a military threat and risk their economic interests, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'Once the military starts to draw up plans for using nuclear weapons, then nuclear weapons could be used earlier in a crisis than otherwise.'
'The government says it will file a review petition against the Supreme Court, but there is no conviction here.' 'It is doing this purely because it is worried.' 'It comes from the same sentiment as asking BJP MPs to spend two nights in a Dalit village,' says Aakar Patel.
Nitish Kumar had a week's time to prove his majority, but Laloo Yadav made full use of Siwan don Mohammad Shahabuddin. A revealing excerpt from Rajesh Singh's Baahubalis Of Indian Politics: From Bullet To Ballot.
'Mr. Modi has now become 1st PM to have his illegal orders set aside by the SC'
The Chinese have just one commander for all the forces confronting India. Commanders of all these forces answer to one man, and one headquarter. India, on the other hand, offers a diversity of options that is a military embarrassment in the 21st century. In Arunachal and Sikkim-Bhutan, the Eastern Army Commander is in charge. In the Uttarakhand (central) sector, it will be the Central Army Commander. The Himachal-Tibet border is the domain of the Western Army Commander. And all of Kashmir and Ladakh further on, the Northern Army's. Effectively, an array of at least eight 'three-star' commanders will be arrayed against one Chinese, says Shekhar Gupta.
Around 700 migrant workers, women and children have lost their lives in this reverse migration. But what is happening today with the migrant labour is only a continuation of the policies pursued by the Modi regime during the last six years. It is not for nothing that India was ranked the most dangerous country in the world for women in 2018 by the Thompson Reuters Foundation poll, points out Rashme Sehgal.
Swaraj said India has made many efforts to have talks with Islamabad and the only reason they have stopped is because of Pakistan's behaviour.
Economic reforms seem to be on a slow train, while good old fiscal populism is alive and flourishing.
Today, the Ladakhis and Tibetans have been joined by the Sikhs, the Madrassis, the Garhwalis, the Rajputs, who are well trained psychologically and otherwise, to defend the nation, observes Claude Arpi.
'General Rawat's unambiguous stand has acted as a much needed confidence booster to the troops -- young officers and soldiers at the cutting edge -- who were often left wondering if they were doing the right and necessary thing in combating the terrorists, many times paying with their own lives,' says Nitin A Gokhale.
Major Somnath Sharma was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously for his bravery in the Kashmir operations on November 3, 1947.
Asserting that "maritime muscle flexing" by some countries and other factors have made the Indo-Pacific region "more contested and more volatile," naval chief Admiral Sunil Lanba on Tuesday said that the Indian Navy has its task cut out as it has been a major security provider in the region.
'I am sceptical of the Indian economy returning to a sustained high-growth trajectory any time soon'
I will give answer to the public in 2019, but Akhilesh government must answer to the people as it had ruled it for the last five years, Modi said.
Don't forget to make your pick for the newsmaker of 2015.
Bihar's Ruling Janata Dal-United legislator Anant Singh was arrested on Wednesday in a case of kidnapping and extortion at Bihita in rural Patna.
Within Sebi, the chairman should hold an umbrella for both young and old employees, says Somasekhar Sundaresan.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.
Among the series of questions raised were how self-loading riffles found their way out of the armoury and came to be used in the firing, how snipers were perched atop vehicles and how persons came to be shot in the face and chest.
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
'... it must network its battlefield units quickly, securely, robustly,' notes Ajai Shukla.
Vajpayee had always felt that India must act with conviction and panache. He decided that, irrespective of the attendant risks, he would undertake what many felt was a precarious course. A fascinating excerpt from N K Singh's Portraits Of Power: Half A Century Of Being At Ringside on Atalji's 96th birthday, December 25.
'Pakistan is convinced that the Modi government has -- given its image and political compulsions -- no choice but to act in the case of another terror attack.'
'Unquestionably, the spirit behind the Panchsheel agreement and the 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' slogan were thrown overboard by the Chinese, and a trust deficit was injected between the two nations.' A revealing excerpt from General J J Singh's The McMahon Line: A Century Of Discord.
'He has terror charges against him. And for an army officer, it's just terrible.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had invited ASEAN leaders to be the chief guests.
'With the recent challenging of the notion of the Indian Ocean Region being India's strategic backyard, China is gradually upping the ante in the maritime realm around India.'
'It would be very easy for me to say, it's only the Pakistanis that want the Kashmir issue to remain alive.' 'Trust me, there is a vested interest on the Indian side in keeping the issue of Jammu and Kashmir alive.'
