What were our political leaders up to on the weekend?
Neither Modi nor Shah had held legislative or executive power in Delhi before 2014. They have no training in appealing to the diversity of India as represented in Parliament. Their prism is the provincial politics of Gujarat. An exclusive excerpt from Vinay Sitapati's fascinating new book, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi.
'Mr Kejriwal is almost exactly the package that Mr Modi offers: Personal aggrandisement, the building of a personality cult through full-page newspaper ads day after day, populist schemes involving subsidies (whether affordable or required), abandonment of secular principles, exaggerated claims and no checks on leadership,' points out T N Ninan.
Cities, roads, stations rechristened in the time of Modi.
India has too many small companies and this is inefficient. It should instead have only a handful of very large players running its economy and these giants can then compete with the world, observes Aakar Patel.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'This pandemic has given him a new platform to perform,' says a member of the government. 'He should feel lucky that he has got an opportunity now to demonstrate to the world his original talent.' 'He needs a visionary script to perform.' Sheela Bhatt reports on the politics of the pandemic.
Another 8 pm prime ministerial speech. Will this one too lead to a scramble and chaos like his previous 8 pm telecasts?
'You can presume that Modi and his party will now focus on the economy.' 'But then, there is the Jharkhand election next month, Delhi soon thereafter and so on.' 'And this isn't a political leadership that takes even a panchayat election lightly,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Days after Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and China's President Xi Jinping expressed their concerns about the war in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the SCO summit in Samarkhand, the tyrant of the Kremlin has raised the military stakes in the conflict.
During Abe's tenure, Japan had announced support for a number of major projects. These included the bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, besides allocations for a freight corridor between Mumbai and New Delhi.
With the spate of businesses turning their attention to Ayodhya, land rates have shot up, in some pockets by as much as 10 times. Whether one walks into a hotel lobby or sits down for a meal, land deals are being discussed at every other table -- one on one or among groups.
'Balakot and Pulwama will definitely help the BJP, but it will still not help them to create a 2014 like situation or go beyond that.'
'From the very start, PM Modi was insistent that visiting foreign leaders should be exposed to an India beyond its capital.' 'Through these experiences, he felt that the full Indian narrative would be much better understood across the world,' explains External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. A riveting excerpt from Bluekraft Digital Foundation's Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery.
'Now I will see how you escape...'
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
'Facing foes with a common intent is not something Modi-Shah's BJP has done before,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'The US will not want to tangle with China landwards.' 'Nor will the US confront the Chinese navy seawards on India's account.'
'The regime -- and particularly the home ministry under Amit Shah -- have sought to suppress and destroy these struggles through intimidation, bullying, threats, through false cases, arrests, custodial torture, the use of draconian laws like the UAPA.'
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
'In his 2014 election campaign, Mr Modi had boasted that he would apply the Gujarat model to the rest of India. We just have to ensure he doesn't start with Parliament,' says Shashi Tharoor in this fascinating excerpt from his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Mr Modi and Mr Shah will need him if they want to win UP again in 2022 and India in 2024. This signals a Yogi Adityanath-sized change in BJP politics, even under Mr Modi, Shekhar Gupta.
'The implication of being adamant is to be arrogant. So yes, he is arrogant.'
The finance minister's assertion that industry should not expect any spectacular announcements in the 2024 interim Budget suggest that the electoral imperatives of more tax concessions or higher expenditure on welfarist programmes could be far less pronounced than they were before the 2019 interim Budget, expects A K Bhattacharya.
Debates on changing the name of India to Bharat continue to spark a crisis of identity without answering moot questions that stare us in the face. Ramesh Menon asks a few of those questions that do not have easy answers.
Facts, they say, don't lie. Nor do figures. R Ramakumar, professor at Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences, demolishes the Government of India's vaccination claims.
Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala explains why he thinks Modi should be at the helm of India.
Behind this never-say-die attitude of the BJP is probably the calculation of the Roman emperors that if bread is scarce, give the people circus, observes Amulya Ganguli.
AAP leader Ashutosh said Modi's name does not match in the BA marksheet and that of the MA degree and even claimed that there were discrepancies in the year of passing as well.
With its gaze steadily fixed on the well-being of its people, the government is going about taking all the imperative measures that need to be taken to beat back the pandemic, observes B S Raghavan.
Modi and Shah addressed rallies away from the four major urban centres of Gujarat: Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot.
Bommarabettu Laxmijanardhana Santhosh is the only south Indian and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's representative in the BJP's senior decision-making hierarchy.
Both countries are closer than before due to these two leaders's public display of mutual connectivity and warm exchanges of words, but how it will help India to serve its interests will be known on Tuesday.
The Centre's interlocutor and retired IPS officer RN Ravi has been shifted from Nagaland to Tamil Nadu as its new governor.
What some of us think are strong, bold and firm decisions are cruel, harsh and unwanted for others. This is what we need to consider when we look at what has happened with the farm laws, asserts Aakar Patel.
'Mayawati is an experienced politician with a track record in national politics much longer than Modi's.' 'She must be sensing from the tremors in the Hindi heartland she crisscrossed in recent months that the prospect of another Modi-led government at the Centre is fast receding,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
While the Samajwadi Party largely banks on its Muslim-Yadav support base, the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to counter it with the Modi-Yogi combo in the state assembly polls.
'Chief Minister Rio is holding the Naga Peace Accord hostage with his tacit support to the NSCN-IM, egging them to refuse to accept a solution within the Constitution.'
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