Economic reforms seem to be on a slow train, while good old fiscal populism is alive and flourishing.
Though the list of superstitious beliefs is long, often dissolving distinctions of class, caste, religion and education, Karnataka's anti-superstition bill is seen as a big step ahead.
How can 'first food' meet the challenge posed by factory-made 'fast foods' which are backed by marketing money and often come with 'traditional taste' tags attached to them? The first step would be to preserve knowledge about first foods, says Dinesh C Sharma.
The government has returned to talks with Pakistan, but can it withstand pressure from a jingoistic press and a rabidly nationalistic social media.
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Both India and China have demonstrated levels of maturity in diffusing tensions and ensuring that the border remains by and large incident free, says Seema Mustafa
'If you are a professional journalist, don't ever think that your work is going to bring in revolution or that you are going to change the world. That job is best left to the revolutionaries,' M V Kamath, the legendary journalist who passed away on October 9, told Nitin Gokhale.
'The blood that runs in the veins of our family can never be anti-national.' 'They called Kanhaiya a traitor for questioning the Indian Army. Do they know that our cousin was killed by militants in Manipur while serving with the CRPF?' Archana Masih/Rediff.com travelled to the land of Lal Salam, Lal Sitara and comrades to find out what moulded India's most talked about student leader, Kanhaiya Kunar.
Like the Hindi film industry, where formulas for hit films are done to death, the political fraternity in India is making an all out effort to 're-brand' itself to follow the hit script of the AAP, says Upasna Pandey
West Bengal was the second-most industrialised state in terms of value added and first in terms of number of factories and employment even in the mid-1960s. With a severe and long process of deindustrialisation, it lost its primacy.
'We have about Rs 4 lakh crore debt on a state budget of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore.' 'We are in a debt two-and-a-half times our annual budget,' says the banker who would have been Tamil Nadu's finance minister had the DMK won.
For India's upstream sector that has seen no new discovery coming into production.
The BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will need to break several records to emerge victorious in the next Lok Sabha elections. Mayank Mishra reports.
Iconic rights activist Irom Sharmila on the highs and lows of her long fast, why she gave it up and her plans.
On the occasion of her breaking the world's longest hunger strike, Rediff.com reproduces this 2011 feature on the activist and her life.
While Iraq and Afghanistan top the Global Terrorism Index 2014 as the most terror-affected nations, India has been ranked number six.
'Nehru is often portrayed as a visionary with his head in the clouds. But he had his feet firmly planted on the ground when it came to building and nurturing institutions and setting them on the right path with the right traditions,' says B S Raghavan.
It is a dark legacy bequeathed by Nehru to India. In its DNA lies the subconscious fount of India's schizophrenic geopolitics that forsook in one sweep all its historically-entrenched strategic interests in Tibet in favour of China, says R N Ravi, on the 60th anniversary of the Panchsheel Agreement.
U R Ananthamurthy on the importance of keeping alive our regional languages.
India has planned 14 strategic railway lines in areas bordering China, Pakistan and Nepal, but most of these projects are stuck for want of funds. Anusha Soni reports
'Indian politics has had three-and-a-half master narratives -- secular nationalism, Hindu nationalism, justice for lower castes and regionalism. The AAP seeks to go beyond that. Therein lies its promise and its challenge,' says Ashutosh Varshney, Brown University professor and author of book Battles Half Won, India's Improbable Democracy.
Indian economy about to take-off
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
