India comes under attack over religious intolerance, human trafficking and slavery at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
'The significance and timing of the PM's start of the campaign journey from Silchar is a clear message that the Barak valley is a priority in his scheme of things,' notes Subimal Bhattacharjee.
A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Thursday.
India's Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 on Wednesday, sharing it with Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, for their work on promoting child rights in the troubled sub-continent, where millions are deprived of their childhood and education.
After a 6.5-hour debate, the upper house clears the bill. Amit Shah said the bill is not anti-Muslim and Indian minorities have nothing to fear from its passage.
It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
Women are great team players and collaborators, 'but they don't put themselves forward,' Dr Gagandeep Kang, the first Indian woman scientist to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, tells Veenu Sandhu.
The history of the Cauvery and Mullaperiyar cases has shown how helpless the constitutional processes and judicial verdicts have been in enforcing the law of the land in inter-state and state-Centre disputes, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'We were supposed to be a united nation based on unity and diversity.' 'Now what we are doing is there will be a class called Marathas, Dangars, etc.' 'The 100 per cent of our nation's population will be in classes and you will be allocating the nation's education and service resources in terms of classes.' 'How does it work out in terms of equality? Where is your equal nation?'
'If you solve it in one day, it will go after a day.' 'If it is there for 100 years or 1,000 years, reservation has to continue.'
Permissive communalism, as represented by the Sachar Committee report, cannot become the basis to counter the threat of majoritarianism, says D L Sheth.
'People feel concerned about the future, whether it is the land or the jobs.' 'The BJP came to power in Assam with promises of maati, bheti (home, hearth and identity), land, jobs and culture.' 'Are these going to taken care of? I think those are real concerns.' 'The Assam chief minister (Sarbananda Sonowal) was one of the leaders of the All Assam Students Union which fought for and is one of the signatories to the Assam Accord.' 'Today, his comrade-in-arms (Samujjal Bhattacharya, chief advisor, AASU) is leading the opposition in the streets.'
Nine young men killed in police firing last August have become symbols of oppression of the tribals of Manipur.
Despite being in the crosshairs of the police, politicians and vigilantes, Malini Subramaniam continues to report from a hotbed of Maoist insurgency.
'The court came to a conclusion using one person's case... Based on that one case, the term "rampant misuse" was used as if it is a generalisation.' 'If one in 10 cases turns out to be false, is it possible to call the Act a charter for blackmail or charter for personal vengeance?' 'Is there any Act either in India or anywhere in the world where there are no false cases?'
'In 2013, Modi said his government would be of Dalits and OBCs.' 'During his tenure, the highest number of atrocities have taken place.' 'What they want is that this Ambedkar Constitution must not be practised in India in the future.'
Why Dalit leaders cross over to the BJP
'A vote for Hillary means a vote for endless wars of trying to overthrow governments and rebuilding foreign countries.' 'A vote for Bernie Sanders means an end to these interventionist wars, and instead spending our money and precious resources rebuilding our own country,' Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the only Hindu-American in the United States Congress, tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com
'We do not oppose any parent admitting his child to any English school.' 'We are opposed to the government grants that are to be given to such institutions.' 'If local languages are to be kept alive, at least they have to be taught at the primary level.'
The Marxists are heading for their worst debacle in many elections. How will May 16, 2014 affect India's Communists? T V R Shenoy surveys the landscape.
'These ISIS terrorists want to smash Western civilisation, smash India. For the time being though, their main target would be the US and Europe.'
