'Drought in the 1990s was essentially the drought of a poor India.' 'This 2016 drought is of a richer and more water-guzzling India.' 'The severity and intensity of the drought is not about lack of rainfall.' 'It is about the lack of planning and foresight, and criminal neglect.'
Although a fiery speaker and mass leader in her own right, Bharti has to necessarily fall back on what is being repeatedly described as a 'Modi lehar' to wrest this seat from the Congress, observes Anita Katyal
Hitting out at the bill, he termed it as an attempt by the government to acquire land, whose price has been rising, for industrialist 'friends'and crony capitalists.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday trained guns on the Narendra Modi government, charging that the country's farmers were being led to a suicide by an administration that is only interested in stealing their land.
Meanwhile, Gandhi said Modi has betrayed the people, claiming that he had not fulfilled promises of providing two crore jobs every year and "depositing" Rs 15 lakh in their bank accounts.
Making no effort to conceal his prime ministerial ambitions, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Saturday said the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections were "a matter of honour" for him.
'After the creation of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh has been left as an agrarian state.' 'Therefore, the special category status to this residual state was imminent and necessary for its development,' YSR Congress MP V Vijayasai Reddy explained in the Rajya Sabha.
Akhilesh said people feel that they have been misled (by the BJP) for forming the government.
'Never has this happened in the state's political history -- that every class of people is unhappy.'
Controversial Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's Man Friday Amit Shah arrived in Lucknow on Wednesday to take over the reins of the party in the country's most populous state, which he himself termed as the route to the ultimate seat of power in Delhi.
Former Delhi law minister Jitender Singh Tomar, who was arrested on Tuesday on charges of submitting a fake degree while filing nomination for the Delhi assembly polls held in February this year, has been taken to Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh for questioning.
Days after the suspension of Indian Administrative Service officer Durga Shakti Nagal, an Indian Police Service officer was transferred two days after he reopened the history-sheet of the father of a Congress member of Legislative Assembly in Rajasthan, who had allegedly been involved in smuggling and other anti-social activities.
The Gomti Riverfront Development project, the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, the Jai Prakash Narayan International Centre and the efforts towards the beautification of Old Lucknow are some of Akhilesh Yadav's initiatives that are the subject of investigation.
Recently, he had surprised many by talking of net neutrality
Investigators are now trying to ascertain as to who made these alleged forged documents and whether an organised gang is behind it.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Saturday released the party's manifesto for Uttar Pradesh assembly elections promising to make efforts to ensure construction of Ram temple under constitutional provisions if voted to power.
Farmers with land sizes less than 0.01 hectare have an average annual income of Rs 54732 and annual consumption of Rs 61296, thereby, a debt of Rs 6564 each year. Compare this with the minimum pay for a government employee, says Devanik Saha.
If you can have caste and faith based parties, why can't there be a gender based one as well, asks T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed to pull off what was unimaginable a year back -- adopting a much-needed centre-left approach, says Devanik Saha.
Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu likely to be India's most water-scarce states this summer
Seeking to woo Muslims as well as upper castes, the Samajwadi Party on Wednesday promised quota in police and other government jobs for minority community, release of "innocent" youths jailed on terror charges and constitution of an upper caste commission in its manifesto brimming with sops.
5 states that contribute just under a fifth of the Lok Sabha's seats will go to the polls early this year.
Sanjeev Nayyar visits an Amma canteen in Chennai, and comes back impressed
There is nothing the young Purvanchali wants more desperately than to escape to a place with less hopelessness, and some opportunity, discovers Shekhar Gupta.
'The man who has been Gujarat's chief minister for 13 years has no understanding of the ills affecting the farmers and agriculture in India.'
Climate change, air quality, nutrition, even connectivity are joining the political agenda, and it will force a shift in policies.
The well-irrigated states of Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, western Uttar Pradesh and coastal states such as Odisha are, for the first time, feeling the effects of a poor monsoon.
A combative Congress president also hit out at the Centre saying it should not try to frighten them and that they 'would not allow democratic institutions to be weakened or destroyed'
No BJP president is powerful when the party is in power. Amit Shah is completely dependent on Narendra Modi's clout. He has a protective political immunity and everyone knows its source, says Bharat Bhushan
'Over 50 crore Indians are currently suffering from a livelihood crisis, something to which the whole country had shut its eyes to for the past six months.' 'We woke up only after the IPL was affected.'
'The BJP should know that simple caste arithmetic may have ceased to follow the basic law of addition.' 'Adding up seemingly distinct vote banks can even cause overall reduction in numbers,' says Sudhir Bisht.
The Congress strategy is to reach out to the rural poor as BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has successfully displaced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the middle class hero. Anita Katyal reports
'We are passing through a very historical moment. The UP election next year and the Lok Sabha election of 2019 will decide the course of India.' 'Maybe the unlettered will save India again because they have inherited a different India and a different idea of India,' says eminent social scientist Achyut Yagnik.
The writing is on the wall -- and it is written in the blood of the women who 'died', 'ran off' or 'committed suicide' under mysterious, carefully unexplained circumstances -- that the only life that matters is one that belongs to an upper class, upper caste, politically connected male.
Despite the strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, the Congress neither had the strategy nor an organisation to cash in, says N D Sharma
Aseem Chhabra's take on the highlights of Indian cinema this year.
'The Congress can't return to power unless it reins in prices, lowers interest rates, taxes the rich,' says Praful Bidwai. 'If this means sacking those most responsible for the UPA's pro-big business policies including Finance Minister Chidambaram, so be it!'
