The question is no longer whether he will win 2019; it's what he will do with the new status, says Shekhar Gupta.
Why did Pakistan sign a cease-fire without acquiring Kashmir, which was the sole purpose of the 1965 War, asks Ahmad Faruqui.
The Maoist-infested state needs a visionary leader and Hemant Soren is definitely not one, opines Aditi Phadnis
For the first time ever, the BJP's headquarters for a Lok Sabha election is outside New Delhi. Meet the folks behind Narendra Modi's campaign for prime minister.
He said the NDA's work culture was different from that of the previous governments.
Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's niece Karuna Shukla on Saturday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, saying the anointment of Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate was against the Constitution.
This is the first time that a Muslim lady has filed a nomination in a Presidential election.
'In Rajiv Gandhi's time, out of every Re 1 spent by the government only 15 paisa reached the public.' 'At this moment, I cannot say that the entire Re 1 reaches the common man's pocket, but yes, two-thirds of that money definitely reaches the common man.' 'And the rest of the money will also reach soon.'
Aseem Chhabra watched some great films and some huge disappointments in 2020.
AIADMK's Jayalalithaa won three assembly by-elections from her hospital bed. However, the DMK heir's decision to disempower second-line satraps, who were running personal fiefdoms in their districts, and his fresh approach, could prove beneficial in the next polls, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Aggravated fears about the fate of Article 370 and Article 35A of the Constitution have reopened old wounds and laid bare the widening emotional distance between Srinagar and New Delhi,' says Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
With the Modi government close to completing its two years in office, a new survey on Saturday said nearly half of the respondents (49 per cent) feel "no change" in their living standards while another 15 per cent feel the situation has actually worsened.
'In all likelihood, the Congress will fall short in Gujarat.' 'The Modi-Amit A Shah duo will hold on to the state for the BJP,' predicts Sudhir Bisht.
The Centre, he said, will soon make a 'big' announcement on Jammu and Kashmir.
'Political elites need to feel that these are our children dying, that this is a crisis for us, a tragedy for our community, we must take immediate action to save the lives of our people.'
'The BJP had no traction in Karnataka and Siddaramaiah would have scraped through if he had not done all that he did.' 'When you pander to one community, the other community gets irritated.' 'Then, when you make fun of the cow and the treating of the cow as sacred, in your effort to belittle the Sangh Parivar and its obscurantism, you are hurting your normal voters too.' 'It is okay to make fun of the Sangh Parivar, but it is not okay to make fun of all Hindus.'
The first 100 days of any government should be a period when it is allowed to get its act together, with no media pressure for faster, higher, says Indira Jayaraman.
Modi said social justice is not a lip service for the government but a commitment.
His recent walkout from Chief Justice Dipak Misra's court earned him critics in courts. 'Yet, even the senior-most judges give him the respect that he deserves.'
How will China deal with Taiwan's first woman president? Srikanth Kondapalli explains the significance of a historic election.
'For Nitish Kumar the message is to be democratic. With the support of the BJP, he had suppressed criticism in Bihar. He would also need to change his highly authoritarian way of governance.' 'The Grand Alliance, given the decisive mandate in its favour, cannot afford to fail the people. They have a duty to make it a model for the rest of India,' says Apoorvanand.
EC on Monday asked the government to defer notifying doubling of price of the fuel produced by companies such as Reliance Industries till general elections are completed.
'While high-level interventions may help smoothen inter-State relationships, they cannot fundamentally change the alchemy of such relationships, which are firmly rooted in mutual benefits and mutual interests,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The minorities are determined to prove Modi wrong in 2019, and the only way he can counter their mobilisation against his government is to get a bigger share of the Hindu vote,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'It does not look like unemployment is a priority for the government.' 'If there was one external factor which could have made an impact on low investment and low jobs, it was the Budget and it has not made any difference.' '2020 is going to be a difficult and challenging year.'
Bharatiya Janata party state president for Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje is a blue-blooded category of politician who inherited political acumen from her mother late Vijayaraje Scindia, the queen-mother of the erstwhile Gwalior state in Madhya Pradesh.
On a visit to India in 2013, writer Ved Mehta -- who passed into the ages on Sunday January 10, 2021 - gave Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel a rare glimpse into his state of mind and what he thinks of the changes he encounters in his motherland.
Her book is less of a Hindutva-loving diatribe against the Dynasty than its detractors suggest, but it is still hard to agree with much of what she writes, says Vir Sanghvi on Tavleen Singh's latest book.
'There were any number of Congress leaders who disliked Sonia Gandhi, but they were very close to Ahmed Bhai and he would listen, and give a shoulder to cry upon.'
''At this stage we are closer to military confrontation than at any time since 1971.' 'Given the known positions of the two governments, it will not be surprising if this happens sooner rather than later,' says Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
'The win in Assam is likely to have a ripple effect in other north-eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland which have been reluctant to embrace the BJP in the past,' says Nitin A Gokhale, the distinguished commentator on strategic affairs, who lived and reported from Assam between 1983 and 2006.
'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.
'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.
'It is clear that Prashant Kishor will be nowhere near repeating his earlier massive wins.' 'Nonetheless, he deserves at least two cheers for having the guts to take on such a challenging task.'
Poor land-use planning, indiscriminate approvals of building plans and the absence of disaster-risk assessment in urban design have resulted in what experts term concentrated concretization, predisposing cities to disaster risks
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 73rd Independence Day.
'The lack of zeal to serve the country in the mammoth government machinery will be the biggest challenge for Narendra Modi and his government as he tries to change things; there will be not just resistance, but a lack of response to begin with.' If Narendra Modi becomes prime minister, Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com says the issue of human resources, lack of talent and value system in governance will be his biggest challenge.
Modi hit out at the UPA government for allegedly 'blocking' surgical strikes post 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has shown it is possible to form an electoral base with pro-women policies that matter, so why don't other political parties replicate it, asks Devanik Saha.
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The Sensex was around 18,600 by the end of August.
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