'It is the impression in Kashmir that if ever a realistic resolution of the problem/dispute is sought to be seriously attempted by New Delhi, the BJP is the best bet,' says Mohammed Sayeed Malik, the distinguished observer on Kashmir.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
King Salman and Narendra Modi will find common ground to intensify cooperation against jihadi terrorism, says Tarun Vijay, MP.
'Pakistan's capacity to carry a normal relationship with India doesn't exist.' 'The relationship with Pakistan is less important than several others.'
New Delhi bureaucrats, accustomed to leisurely lunches, golf in the afternoon and long weekends, have been shaken out of their somnolence, say authors. Fear and suspicion hang heavy over the red-sands.
In his last column for Rediff.com, Praful Bidwai joins issues with those lauding India's covert operation against Naga rebels based in Myanmarese territory.
Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tall claims that no one has served nature more than India, some of the steps taken by his BJP government proves that the ground reality is exactly opposite, says Devanik Saha.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Aziz Haniffa, who has covered every Indian Prime Minister's visit to the US since Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, gives us a peek into what's happening in Washington, DC on the eve of the Modi-Trump summit.
Tarun Vijay, MP, salutes the General whom he adored as a great friend.
'Pakistan thinks it is winning this low intensity conflict.' 'It is a serious observation. Half the battle is convincing your adversary that he cannot make headway.' 'A lot depends on how the internal professional management of the army and the handling of situations that are bound to rise sooner than later in his command, are done.'
The Congress has kept quiet on the way the Union home ministry has handled innumerable blast cases under its rule. It has not openly condemned the bias that pervades within its government and the security agencies, says Neeta Kolhatkar.
A list of all the foreign visits taken up by PM Narendra Modi this year and their outcomes.
'Modi has entered blunderland as he does not understand the army. He has actually meddled with the army, which is much more damaging than the ignorance of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.' 'People had an impression that the BJP was different. Now it has been made very, very, plain that it is not.' 'Look at the contrast in the behaviour of the prime minister. When they burnt buses in Gujarat for an unjust demand, the prime minister addressed them in Gujarati while the army veterans were on relay hunger strike for the 74th day on that day, but no word on this from the PM.'
'When you come to Delhi, you see that there are many Kashmirs here -- the Dalits, Muslims, women, bonded labourers.'
'If India employed a strategy of a 'thousand cuts', Pakistan will wither away.'
The US and its allies must evolve a more comprehensive long-term plan to defeat the new danger that the caliphate poses to the world order. And India too must do its bit for course correction, says strategic expert Gurmeet Kanwal.
Rajiv Gandhi would have turned 72 on August 20. Had he lived. On a humid night 25 years ago, the former prime minister of India was murdered in cold blood by an LTTE suicide bomber. Neena Gopal was an eyewitness to the assassination, and in this exclusive extract from her new book, The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, she reveals for the first time what she saw in Sriperumbudur that night.
The BDCA is yet another dose of insidious placebos administered on the people of India by their own government that has been in perpetual denial over the steady incremental loss of strategic Indian territory, says R N Ravi
The local labour force is streaming out of the region, creating a vacuum that makes it easier for the Bangladeshis to fill in, says R N Ravi
'Greenpeace has been brutal in targeting both India and the Manmohan Singh government. The push to go after Indian coal is driven by its long-term agenda. What is surprising is that China has not been meted out the same treatment, despite the fact that the rise of China as an economic power has been built around generating power from coal. 'Being richer and more affluent, yet far less democratic, there is less room for an NGO such as Greenpeace to drive home a complicated global agenda, so there is more of a tendency to go along with anything the Chinese offer despite China being the biggest by far with regard to coal use. But for India, it reserves tougher prescriptions, notably for its middle class, says Srinivas Bharadwaj.
'In the first meeting of this new year, we took a joint new year resolution that we will complete it this year. At the time things were not very clear, but the mood was clear that yes, we must resolve it.' 'Yes, details have to come out, but there are some sensitivities, there are some stake-holders not yet on board, especially other Naga undergrounds etc, we would like them to come on board... So at a proper time it has to be revealed to the country, and to the legislature. Perhaps, we may have to wait for some more time.' 'With better understanding of the Indian system, many of them have learnt, realised, appreciated that Naga nationalist aspirations can be accommodated in the Indian system. The Indian system is pretty comprehensive and flexible.' 'A Naga has as much stake, claim over India as any other Indian. There is no distinction. This, Nagas have realised, that yes, Naga nationalist aspirations and Indian nationalism are not mutually exclusive.' Ravindra Narayan Ravi, the Government of India's Special Interlocutor for the Naga talks, explains how the Naga Peace Accord was reached in an exclusive interview to Saisuresh Sivaswamy/Rediff.com