Kumar will always be known as the reformer chief minister who brought governance back to Bihar.
Nitin A Gokhale, Co-founder, BharatShakti.in and long-time Rediff.com contributor, remembers a most unusual politician.
The new minister must commit himself to supporting long-term defence plans or else defence modernisation will continue to lag and the growing military capabilities gap with China will assume ominous proportions, warns Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'We rarely choose to fight when the threat is still a nascent threat. When we do fight, we fight when the invaders reach Panipat and are preparing to knock on the gates of Delhi.'
'How can the BJP give Muslim candidates tickets if they don't have any good Muslim candidates?'
China is worried about the situation post the Dalai Lama and that his reincarnation could surface in Arunchal Pradesh, a region it claims as its own, but which is part of the Indian Republic, says former RA&W Additional Secretary Jayadeva Ranade.
BJP President Amit Shah -- arguably the second most powerful politician in the nation -- granted a rare television interview to the Network 18 group of news channels. Rediff.com's Rajesh Alva checks out what the BJP boss said in this word cloud assessment of the interview.
'More so, if it is their daughters wanting to marry someone of their own choosing.' 'Children are seen as property. That's why the problem is so messy.' For young Indians wanting to marry outside their religion, expressing their right to love and live as they choose is becoming increasingly hazardous.
With the government claiming that the economy has been growing robustly and the Opposition refuting these claims, the common man is none the wiser, says Rajeev Sharma.
One warm sunny day, Abhilasha Ojha stumbles upon the soul of Bahrain.
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
While Jayalalithaa may have died her political legacy will continue to survive through the slew of 'Amma' branded products and services.
Modi said there has been a 'silent revolution'.
Modi and Shah can't afford to lose any of the 24 per cent Dalit vote of 2014, says Shekhar Gupta.
'If the RSS should be saluted for choosing such a scholarly statesman to address its highly trained cadre, one must also praise Pranab Da's sagacity for having gracefully accepting the invitation, thus disapproving any ideological apartheid,' says former BJP MP Tarun Vijay.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
'Mulayam has by design cornered the people's attention back to the party and Akhilesh.' 'People were only talking of Modi and demonetisation, but now suddenly everybody is talking of Akhilesh and the SP.' 'My personal subjective impression is that the SP is neck and neck with the BJP.'
'In the lingo of Star Trek, how willing are we to keep all hailing frequencies open in order to listen more closely and with empathy to whoever we consider the 'other'?'
Olympic organisers say they will not reveal the final torchbearer's identity until the torch arrives in the stadium on live television, watched by billions of spectators.
Nitish Kumar has failed to curb communal forces and hoodlums across communities. And that is ominous for Bihar's present and future, warns Mohammad Sajjad.
Reform ideas do not occur overnight and evolve over the years.
Besides weakening the Maoists' lethal capacities and reducing violence, it is essential to ensure that governance is improved, so that those prone to sympathising with, or supporting, the Maoists would, in the long run, realise the needlessness and futility of doing so, says P V Ramana and Raj Bala Rana.
The venom and contemptuous sarcasm evident on the army's tweet on the Yeti and my reply has something to do with the intrinsic hatred that a section of the media nurses against the right wing, says Tarun Vijay.
When Prime Minister Modi observes the first anniversary of his government at Nagla Chandrabhan, Deendayal Upadhyaya's birthplace in Mathura, on Monday, he shall be essentially reiterating his commitment to achieving the ideal of Upadhyaya's 'Dharma Rajya', a State free of inequality and of division, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers got its new chairman on Monday in Jammu and Kashmir's Abdul Rahim Rather.
'Whatever happens in Delhi happens in India,' says Kiran Bedi.
'Fearful of losing strategic advantage, the only option for Pakistan is to rattle its nuclear sabre!' 'Pakistan thereby hopes to play on the worldwide fear of an outbreak of nuclear war in South Asia,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Al Qaeda 'had been preparing to spread its ideology to India', says Bruce Hoffman, Director Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.
'India's nationalism has always been an exceptional and great experiment.' 'We said you don't have to give up your language, your lifestyle or your religion in order to be an Indian national.' 'Nowhere in the world could you find on such a large scale such a democratic experiment of nation building based on diversity.' 'That is the greatness of India's nationalism and we are on the verge of losing that greatness.'
The Supreme Court has directed a series of actions to clean the Taj, including bringing in compressed natural gas (CNG) to replace dirty coal.
'Most likely scenario is Modi comes back with either a much smaller majority and no majority at all and a coalition.' 'Very hard to imagine him doing better than he did last time.' 'He will then be a weaker prime minister,' the author of The Billionaire Raj tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
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