.jpg)
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.
Gurugram police has assured residents that it is drawing out a detailed plan to avert traffic jams during rains this year.
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.
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.
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.
'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.'
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
'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.
'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.
'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.
'The three tycoons I deal with in the first chapter -- Ambani, Mallya and Adani -- in their own way represent the change that has come over India.' 'Of the three of them, Mallya is the most fun. He was terrific.' 'And I don't say that because I tell the story in the book of his golden toilet.'
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.
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.
Privacy allows people a space where they can refuse to conform. And it is in that space where liberty flourishes.
In an online chat with readers overseas consultant NNS Chandra offered advice.
'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.
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.
He also made it clear that judiciary cannot depend on executive in choosing judges.
For the remaining projects, it is difficult to arrive at an estimate.
'India has both the wherewithal and the will to fight the enemy, but is living in a make believe world of its own since it is yet to accept that it is indeed at war,' says military historian Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Rejecting allegations of vendetta levelled against him and the United Progressive Alliance, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday demanded that the government should ensure that Lalit Modi returns to India to face the probe by the Enforcement Directorate on various charges, including money laundering.
'That's the stunning achievement of two-and-a-half years of this government -- a political bait-and-switch, selling a promise of economic development, and delivering a triumphalist machine that sacralises country, nationalism, majoritarianism and tradition, to achieve Hindutva goals,' says Mitali Saran.
AAP is arguing quietly that indifference, alienation have to go. These are symptoms of disempowerment. For AAP, the battle to empower people demands new engagements with the marginals and corporations, says Shiv Visvanathan.
The moot point is if a re-energised Jayalalitha will order snap polls when the Opposition is in disarray and her own political starts are on the rise, says N Nathiya Moorthy.
'If, in the first 48 to 72 hours, they are just on a wild goose chase, then Gauri Lankesh's murder will not get solved.'
AAP is not like any other party but an alternative for a change in this country, Jarnail Singh tells Rediff.com's Onkar Singh.
Shekhar Gupta has a question for Kanhaiya Kumar, but a bigger, more vital, one for the honourable judge.
At least 27 people were reported dead on Friday after Malian commandos stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako with at least 170 people inside, many of them foreigners, that had been seized by Islamist gunmen.
Israel, which was among the first responders in providing assistance to Nepal after the earthquake, had its entire embassy staff in Delhi work with military precision to rush relief. Shubha Singh reports
In the year since Modi cast the spotlight on Pakistan's human rights violations in Balochistan, India has not done much more than raise the issue at the UN a few times.
In the city to lead India's 70th Independence Day celebrations, M J Akbar called terrorism a major threat to human rights.
Swiss police in February searched HSBC offices in Geneva as part of its probe.
Rogue elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence worry about India's interference in Afghanistan after the West pullout. The attack was an attempt to send a strong message to New Delhi to keep away, sources in the Intelligence Bureau point out.
A possible, easier and less-complicated way for the Centre would have been to approach the SC with the same queries much earlier, before a ground-swell of popular sentiments and consequent political tensions had built up in Tamil Nadu, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances