Over the years India's governments have turned several public goods into private ones, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Faceless Ambedkarite groups from across the country are running BSP's election war rooms, writes Archis Mohan.
Sidhu said that the corridor would promote peace and erase "enmity" between India and Pakistan and create infinite possibilities between them, including the resumption of cricket ties.
The plan of UID/Aadhaar-based surveillance does not end with the collection of fingerprints and iris scan, it goes quite beyond it and poses a lethal threat to the idea of India, says Gopal Krishna.
The State must stand as a solid tower of confidence to provide a guarantee of safety to its citizens and instill fear in the hearts of offenders. But where is that State, asks Tarun Vijay
Only on Wednesday, in his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Modi said he wants to resolve the Kashmir issue through Vajpayee's doctrine of "Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat" - a testimony to the former PM's lasting legacy.
Narendra Modi will turn 64, playing host to the visiting Chinese leader in Ahmedabad on Wednesday
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.
The suspension of mobile communication for the past 12 days in Kashmir amid strict curfew has put citizens in a desperate situation, says Athar Parvaiz.
Members of Parliament on Sunday bid adieu to outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee.
'We live in a time when hideous anger easily flares up, particularly on identity-related issues.' 'Often advocates of harmony and compassion fall victim to the same anger and end up hating the 'haters'!' 'This changes the moment we are able to turn the slanging match into a conversation.' 'More often than not you may find that there is agreement on a fundamental truth -- respect for the life and dignity of all.'
For Rajnikanth, who the BJP is wooing, politics looks more likely to happen in 2019, although his friend Kamalahaasan could afford to wait a little longer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The world awaits a creative breakthrough for mobile phone ads, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Clusters of policemen and television journalists alertly anticipated the arrival of Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, who, it was confirmed by most people I asked, does not visit court often. No one could remember when they had last heard of Deven Bharti appearing as a witness in a murder trial.
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first trip to New York as leader of the world's most populous democracy, will draw perhaps the largest crowd ever by a foreign leader on US soil when he takes the stage on Sunday in Madison Square Garden before a crowd forecast to total more than 18,000 people.
'Once you set up a tweet-storm of vilification, labelling individuals anti-nationals, traitors, blasphemous, and foreign agents, you are creating enough justification for somebody with a gun to kill, or for a mob to lynch,' warns Shekhar Gupta.
Expressing his concerns about India under Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, India-born author Salman Rushdie said that the attacks on freedom of expression could worsen if the Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power.
'The bad dream can turn into a ghoulish nightmare for the BJP if the Gujjars in Rajasthan and the Patels in Gujarat, both BJP-ruled states, were to fish in troubled waters and relaunch their respective agitations for quotas in government jobs,' warns Rajeev Sharma.
'In a nation where safety standards are the lowest in the world, why make compliance expensive?' asks Aakar Patel.
Gurugram police has assured residents that it is drawing out a detailed plan to avert traffic jams during rains this year.
Aseem Chhabra lists the movies that taught him about the Idea of India.
If Paris really meant to serve as a landmark in recognising equity in climate negotiations, it should have heralded the second phase of the Kyoto protocol. Instead we have all countries, India and China included, all signing up with voluntary commitments in what can only be seen as a race to the bottom, reports Darryl D'Monte.
You could step aside from the BJP membership, don the mantle of a full-time journalist again and then go ballistic against the government, Sudhir Bisht tells Arun Shourie in this open letter.
A Ganesh Nadar, who once met V Prabhakaran at the LTTE's press conference in Jaffna, feels Madras Cafe is not at all about the Tigers.
'The police had cautioned me that there could be some 'trouble' in Dhaka by the end of June.' 'Once brainwashed, these young people don't think twice about killing people, thinking such an act will pave the path for heaven.'
Using the Jinnah portrait as an issue, and by demonising AMU and consequently Indian Muslims, the politics of communal polarisation is sought to be played out ahead of the Kairana Lok Sabha by-poll and to sustain it till the next Lok Sabha election, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The Indian and Israeli rabbis were singing a small departure song for brave little Moshe, who had spent many, likely, heartbreaking but bittersweet hours at this home of his babyhood, looking at the drawings his mother had made for him, that were still up in his room.'
On his recent visit to China, the President made eminently sensible suggestions to improve relations except that they can't work in the present atmosphere.
'It is from her that present-day political stalwarts continue to draw lessons on testing the limits of Constitutional democracy, and whose slogans even her party's staunchest opponents imitate even after over 30 years of her death,' says Veenu Sandhu.
AAdhar cannot be successful unless there is proper coordination at the helm.
There are unprecedented political implications of identification based on 'biological attributes of an individual', such as employed by Aadhaar, warns Gopal Krishna.
In an online chat with readers overseas consultant NNS Chandra offered advice.
Raghuram Rajan said the head of the central bank should have a fixed tenure of more than three years as the current term was too short.
'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.
In an unprecedented move, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, the country's highest sporting award, will be conferred on four athletes this year. The Sports Ministry announced on Monday that Olympic medalists P V Sindhu and Sakshi Malik will be honoured alongside trail-blazing gymnast Dipa Karmakar and ace shooter Jitu Rai.
This theory of 'Hindus vs the rest' sees the two communities as two separate blocs. Isn't that the two-nation theory? What of the deep bonds that the communities have on the ground? asks Jyoti Punwani.
Privacy allows people a space where they can refuse to conform. And it is in that space where liberty flourishes.
'Besides electoral opportunism, a sustained vilification of AMU on one or the other pretext helps them sustain their 'everyday communalism', the new strategy of the BJP of the Narendra Damodardas Modi-Amit Anilchandra Shah era,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Challenges will come but we will stay the course. No big step can be taken if one is afraid of criticism. We will not flinch from criticism,' says Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
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