In Tamil Nadu, the alternative to one Dravidian party has been another, and for one actor-politician CM, there is another. Their initial popularity may owe to their filmi charisma, but their continued acceptance owed to their government's policies and programmes targeting the poor and the needy in the state, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What If has its moments but doesn't really shine through in entirety, says Paloma Sharma.
'The idea behind Kya Dilli Kya Lahore is to once again point out the futility of war as well as highlight why human comes before being. And Vijay Raaz accomplishes that to a reasonable extent in his first filmmaking effort,' says Sukanya Verma.
The government's Swachh Bharat programme presents entrepreneurs with a chance to curb open defecation and make money in the process.
He played James Bond seven times. But the role Roger Moore most cherished was a different one.
'We often celebrate scholastic excellence while ignoring the majority of students who aren't there yet,' Pratham CEO Rukmini Banerji tells Geetanjali Krishna. 'It's time we celebrated the bottom.'
A lot of student friendly changes were introduced this year.
'The brazen politics, in this series of bullying of AMU by functionaries of the Union and provincial governments, utterly disregarding the fact that the matter is sub judice, is quite obvious.' 'One needs to see through the desperate politics of the BJP which governs both Uttar Pradesh and the Centre, especially its woes over its Dalit support base,' says AMU Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
The 2019 election gives the Indian public the same choice: Between growth and oligarchs (or, in our case, dynasts and crony capitalists). If we chose wisely, well and good. If not, well, we have the Nehruvian Rate of Growth and massive corruption to fall back on. In a large sense, it is a choice between the India of the Lutyens elites and the Bharat of the real citizen, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
When a crime is committed, everyone seems to have a view on who has done wrong, and regardless of judicial outcome through due process of law, theories of how justice was done or not done mushroom
'Imran and his government have obviously agreed to be subservient to the military establishment.' 'How can we expect him to take a stand on anything?'
...But ends up being oddly moving, says Sreehari Nair.
He was the army commander who planned Operation Bluestar. As army chief he planned Operation Brasstacks which rattled the Pakistan army. General K Sundarji was brilliant, ambitious and controversial, remembers Rahul Bedi.
Neeraj Pandey's Aiyaary is the sort of spy fantasy story that drunks narrate in bars, says Sreehari Nair.
Tragic as it is, the submarine accident is more tactical in nature and it is the deeper strategic malaise across the board -- political, economic, security, judiciary, bureaucracy and even the media -- that has led to this dark mood of gloom and despondency, says Commodore (retd) C Uday Bhaskar.
'Kashmir is complex, conflicted and unpredictable.' 'Take the instance of Handwara and the killings there.' 'The need of the hour is more one of restraint in the violent reactions of the armed forces.' 'But restraint is wanting in Kashmir for a quarter of a century now.'
Where cheer is indispensable and cynicism is undesirable -- the world is viewed through rose-coloured glasses in Vikas Bahl's Shaandaar, feels Sukanya Verma
Harish Kapadia is the only Indian to win mountaineering's most prestigious award.
'No one has ever heard of a thulabharam scale collapsing before.' 'I was very fortunate to have escaped with a head injury, which could have been a lot worse if my optic nerve was hit or say if the hook had landed on my neck.'
'When the forensics have collapsed, approver is clearly proved to be a liar from the beginning to the end... Does the prosecution genuinely believe that we ought to remain in judicial custody despite showing that their own story is not being corroborated by evidence, for another 192 witnesses?'
From reaching out to the Jat community and requesting them to not harm the country's assets to trying to mediate on behalf of the women protesting against Shani Shingnapur temple authorities, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has made his presence felt. Nikita Puri examines the rise of the New Age guru.
'The strategies outlined in Jaitley's Budget won't create the millions of jobs needed to dispel the despair and cynicism of militant youth in the Red Corridor running from Nepal to Tamil Nadu.'
In a fast evolving health care industry, expect some pain before real gains.
Samrat & Co. might be about an extraordinarily observational man's fight against crime but as far as cinema goes, this film is a crime against the genre.
The government must realise that it has very little time to recover itself, its reputation, its legacy - and India's fortunes,says Mihir S Sharma.
Lionel Messi does not need a Copa America win to feel like the king of the world. He captured that crown a long ago, says Dhruv Munjal.
'Why do sections of Muslims seem to prefer Lalu and Mulayam who symbolise wilful neglect of governance and development? In this election, secularism is less at stake. What is more at stake is the degenerative, cynical, opportunistic, and discredit-worthy misuse of secularism by the non-BJP leaders and their social constituencies,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
In a country where winning an Olympic medal is a rarity and bagging two in a row a distant dream, India's lone double-Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar revealed that he was advised to 'bow out on a high' after his bronze-medal feat at the 2008 Beijing Games.
'The Congress has no moral right to throw mud at others. The Gandhis talking of corruption sounds worse than the devil quoting scripture.'
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal said that the MadisonSquareGarden congregation is not a sign of good foreign policy as prime ministers should not go abroad for "entertainment value" but hardcore diplomacy.
'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.
Even though the Democrat nominee won, polls showed that Trump had exceeded expectations.
Waiting is mostly deftly thought out and speaks on many levels, says Sukanya Verma.
After 11 years at the helm of Jubilant, Ajay Kaul, the 'nuts and bolts' executive, called it a day amid speculation that his expansionist strategy was not clicking, says Viveat Susan Pinto.
Here's a look at Aamir's unique avatars, where he's not playing the usual cop or college-goer, no matter how well (or how often) he's performed. And also where what he plays is as attention grabbing as how he plays it, no matter how lousy the film.
'Thugs is smarter than a lot of 'nationalistic' movies,' notes Rohit Sathish Nair.
'In the coming months, expect more government action that will be packaged as an assault on black money,' warns A K Bhattacharya.
'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.'
'Those of us who have seen the Indian military from close quarters for decades now are outraged at Admiral Sushil Kumar's irresponsible and in my view flippant remark,' says Nitin A Gokhale. 'What makes people like Julio Riberio and Admiral Sushil Kumar, who rose to the highest positions in their respective professions, play the victim? Especially when it is not clear if all the attacks on Christians and Christian establishments had their roots in religious intolerance.'
Pakistani media on Monday termed the first meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif as a "minor miracle" and noted that the dialogue held amidst a tense atmosphere yielded "words" but "no action".
