The church bells don't toll in Churachandpur any more. The hill district in Manipur has been in mourning for more than a year.
'The BJP can kill two birds with one stone by wresting back control of the message; and the steps are fairly obvious. Once the media is neutral, there is a level playing field,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
After a week-long washout, Lok Sabha transacted some business on Monday as two bills were introduced and another taken up for consideration even as Congress and some other parties continued their vociferous protests, along with display of placards.
Akbar is rumoured to have once asked the navratnas of his court what the greatest pleasure in the world was. The stock answers came back: wealth, power, women, food, wine and so on, with the emperor's own contribution being hunting. Birbal was the outlier; he asserted that the greatest pleasure in the world was surely a good bowel movement.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana envisages housing to 20 mn households by 2022.
Why does Modi want to speak to the students while his audience should be teachers and parents, not necessarily in that order. And September 5 is not Children's Day but Teachers' Day, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
According to the 2011 census, 67 per cent of rural households and 13 per cent of urban households defecate in the open.
At these 'relief camps' people had nothing to sleep on except for a piece of cloth and men and women, boys and girls all cramped together. Factor in the fact that Kakching in the 2011 census had a population of 28,746 people and that about 90 per cent of that population has been affected by the floods now, and one can work the math of the crisis at hand.
Vociferous protests by Opposition members led by the Congress continued in the Lok Sabha.
Setting the stage for confrontation in Parliament, an all-party meeting called in New Delhi on the eve of the monsoon session on Monday ended in a deadlock over controversies related to the Lalit Modi and Vyapam scam even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered to discuss all issues. The government ruled out any resignations.
'Gau rakshaks portray themselves to be bigger than the chief minister and Prime Minister Modi.' 'We have lost business of Rs 4,000 crore in UP alone since the BJP manifesto was released.'
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
Aadhaar-related schemes and the Aadhaar Act exist on the assumption that Right to Privacy is not a Fundamental Right.
With Narendra Modi about to make his first Independence Day speech, there is a buzz in Delhi that Modi will make some big announcements to signal major reforms and directional shifts. But we have to wait and see if it happens, says Mohan Guruswamy.
Something about the big car and its passengers, standing solemnly outside their vehicle, piqued the biker's interest.
'Slightly more than 50 per cent of all Keralites are Hindus. If we can unite as many as we can, we can create a huge difference in the political scene in Kerala.'
Nine young men killed in police firing last August have become symbols of oppression of the tribals of Manipur.
'He is just a 22 year old who has no knowledge of India's laws or Constitution. How will such a man handle a discussion on reservations in an intelligent, lawful manner?' 'Let me alert everybody that he is using the 1985 formula. Back then they opposed reservations based on caste for OBCs and now they want to be included in the same category. This clearly tells us what their intention is. They don't want reservations; they want reservations to be cancelled altogether.'
After ten minutes no one could keep track of the legal team's questions on the geography of the route Sandeep Patil took on his Pulsar Bajaj motorcycle, on the morning of April 25, 2012. Not the judge. Or the onlookers. Least of all Patil.
'Communalism and communal riots happened in India only during and due to colonialism. Pre-colonial India didn't have this problem of communal conflicts and religious strife.'
To mark his 50th death anniversary, rediff.com has launched a special series to evaluate Jawaharlal Nehru's legacy.
'We used to say two things are found everywhere: A potato and a Sikh. I think you can substitute Gujarati for the Sikh because Gujaratis are everywhere.'
With nearly a million identified slums, UP urgently requires housing for the poor
'Will 'Make in India' be able to harness the demographic dividend so it does not become a disaster?' 'Will 'Digital India' live up to the lofty promises the government and private sector made as part of its recent launch?'
Sarpanch leaders are changing Rajasthan for the girl child, says Rashme Sehgal.
The Opposition on Monday charged the government with trying to promote crony capitalism, creating fear by giving "unbridled power" to taxmen, trying to snoop into people's lives through increased use of Aadhaar through the provisions of the Finance Bill.
It, however, lags other states on crucial parameters such as health care and rural poverty.
With facts and figures, the CAG report has highlighted how Gujarat was far from a role model for states across India, and that the progress made in this province in western India in improving agriculture, education, healthcare and empowerment of women and children, was not exactly creditable, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
It will now take at least two more years to get a clarity on the priorities and policies of the leadership of the new state of Telangana.
Glaring contrasts in various spheres in this Nehru-Gandhi family pocketborough are being raised by the rivals to target Congress President Sonia Gandhi for lop-sided development in the constituency from where she is seeking a fourth term.
Conde Nast Traveller sorted through the wish lists of wildlife enthusiasts from around the world to collate this definitive guide. How many will you cross off?
In Indian elections today, India's Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath says, "Muscle Power has been replaced by 'Money Power,'" adding that the Election Commission's greatest dilemma is worrying about how the media can be prevented from influencing the outcome in the coming general election.
Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in mankind's history has such an idea taken the concrete shape in form of a law. The National Food Security Bill, which will come via ordinance and not after the debate in Parliament, is an incredible economic tool to tackle the hunger of poor Indians. Also, it has already been condemned widely as a political gimmick.
'The failure of the ECI to follow the Registration of Electoral Rules and create verified and audited rolls or even verifiable and auditable ones, highlight that the entire electoral roll is merely a compilation of names without any effort or intention for completeness, correctness or fair play.' 'We are fooling ourselves by electing our representatives based on faulty electoral rolls that do not represent the people of the constituency. Elections based on these rolls are neither free nor fair. Democracy is under siege,' says Dr Anupam Saraph.
The proposed changes to the child labour law to allow children and adolescents to work for their families would be most retrograde and regressive, say Shinzani Jain and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
Most juvenile remand homes are in appalling condition and need a massive overhaul. But whether redrafting the law will bring down juvenile crime is the moot question. What is required better remand homes, more specialised care rather than to expose young people to the trauma and stigma of adult jails, says Rashme Sehgal.
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