Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently completed one year in office, has, in an exclusive interview with Smita Prakash, editor, ANI, said the opposition alleging that his government is a "suit boot ki sarkar" is definitely better and more acceptable than being labelled a "suitcase" (ki sarkar), and satirically added, that after ruling for sixty years, the Congress has suddenly remembered the poor.
'Pakistan needs to be constantly at war with somebody, ultimately resulting in it waging war on itself and its own people,' says Shekhar Gupta.
In most cases, the payback on energy saving projects offered by GIBSS are between one and three years.
Anshu Gupta, the founder of Goonj, has transformed the culture of giving in the country. He has for 15 years now, worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, by making discarded materials a resource for the poor. His weapon, he says, is 'cloth as a tool of social change.'
What got the Jats of Haryana so furious?
'If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous one and the most connected.'
U R Ananthamurthy's assertion of leaving the country if Modi is voted to power is an affront to the deep sense of the Indian voters who have time and again shown a certain sagacity and wisdom of judgement. It certainly shows a 'corruption of the mind' on his part and not on the one he chooses to irrationally oppose, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
Here's a glimpse at what happened around the world last week
Ahluwalia is not a great fan of the Uber model.
Rediff.com reproduces the 1997 feature about Laxman, his passion for crows, and of course, his genius.
'This is India, bhai. This kind of country does not exist anywhere in the world.'
Born and abandoned in Mumbai, reborn in Sweden, Erika Sandberg says she is Indian on the outside but feels Swedish on the inside. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel narrates her tale.
This was good enough for Fernandes to hire Chandilya to lead his India business.
She needs to find innovative ways to at least match the growth during Gehlot's rule.
'The main ploy of the BJP's pre-poll proclamations on corruption was so cacophonous and resounding that it unexpectedly worked out to its greatest advantage. But there seems to be a lull after the sound and fury over corruption,' says Ram Ugrah.
Leading think tank discusses a likely Narendra Modi government and America's engagement with the man US once scorned. Aziz Haniffa reports
'The toughest challenge is not to satisfy the luxury customer.' 'The toughest challenge is to satisfy the budget customer.'
'I don't practise yoga. How am I less of a nationalist than the person who practises it? Is it a crime if I don't practice it?'
If your child is spending too much time online, an Internet de-addiction clinic can help him or her use technology in a healthy manner, reports Indulekha Aravind.
'When workers in other industries enjoy protection, why should sex workers not receive similar protection?' 'Sex work should be treated as work and brought under the work schedule of the labour department.' 'We will only end up giving immunity to the pimps and brothels to buy or sell human beings. This will in turn increase trafficking of young women and children.' Rashme Sehgal reports on the debate over legalising prostitution, a bugle in whose favour has been sounded by the new chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Lalitha Kumaramangalam.
Friends and colleagues pay rich tributes to the "charming, approachable, and very accessible" Indian Constitution scholar Granville 'Red' Austin.
Vivek Gambhir revels in his two-city life between the Godrej-owned flagship in Mumbai and his own family in New Delhi.
Was the Modi-Obama summit the panacea for all that troubles the India-US relationship?
Ameesha Joshi tells Harish Kotian/Rediff.com what made her and Anna Sarkissian devote much of the last 10 years on a movie on women's boxing in India.
After weighing all the costs and benefits, the next administration is likely to reduce and restructure assistance to Pakistan but not to end it altogether, says Daniel S Markey.
Rajeev Srinivasan on whom the Congress might put forth as its leader in 2014.
Pranjul Bhandari, Chief India Economist, HSBC, speaks about a range of issues ranging from inflation, to how Goods and Services Tax and land acquisition bills can help India hit double digit growth, and her impressions about economic growth in the last one year after Narendra Modi took over as India's Prime Minister.
Full transcript of President Obama's speech at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.
The West has always preferred a timid, half intelligent and a dependent India rather than a decisively independent and self-reliant one. A pliable Indian leadership suits the West best, says Tarun Vijay.
'India should think big: About how in a multi-polar world, India can indeed be one of the poles, rather than being a secondary power that has to worry about 'alignment' with one of the poles. A G3 in other words, India should look to getting others to align with itself rather than the US or China,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
ugar mills in UP owe thousands of crores to cane farmers.
We need to question ourselves if we are to be implicated as well in the institutional murder of Rohith and many other Rohiths, if not bodily but in spirit, because of our complicity in naturalising this elitist, exclusionary, discriminatory-to-the-core conception of education, says Kishalaya Mukhopadhyay.
'Pakistan's recent utterances and tendency to use pinpricks to try our patience appear reminiscent of 1965. We are a strong nation, emerging stronger,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'After the 2002 riots when the media and other political parties started blaming Modiji, thousands of people like us -- now, it must be crores of us -- started becoming staunch supporters of Modiji. The more you blamed him the more of our support he gained.' Pramod Singh of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh is one of Narendra Modi's biggest fans and a member of Modi's India272 Web initiative, spreading the leader's message on social media and the Internet.
Indian economy about to take-off
'Even if Akhilesh Yadav opens up the entire state treasury for us we will not vote for the Samajwadi Party... ''...I don't want to return to my village, my head will be chopped off. They want me to press the button on the lotus.' Caught between an aggressive BSP cornering Dalit votes and the BJP cornering other Hindu votes, the Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt presents the grim situation on the ground in western Uttar Pradesh.
Very few old-style RSS workers-turned-leaders have survived Narendra Modi's political ambush in state politics. Harin Pathak's end closes the chapter for Modi who started his post-2002 riots journey with a new mix of profit-centric development and middle class-pleasing commerce, technology-driven communication with voters, and an unspoken Hindutva that speaks only through posturings and symbols. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt reveals the real reasons for the Modi-Pathak rupture.
Imagine being a part of a country, but being discriminated against by the majority community and atrocities being committed against you by the state. This is the deplorable conditions that the Rohingyas of Myanmar live in where they are cut off from their livelihoods and sources of income, unable to access markets, hospitals and schools, and have little or no access to relief aid. In order to understand the situation and the genesis of the tragedy unfolding, Rediff.com's Archana Masih speaks to Ambassador Vijay Nambiar, the United Nations' Chef de Cabinet (Chief of Staff), who had served a long stint with the UN in New York on the issue.
Hemal Trivedi, a Hindu filmmaker originally from India, and Mohammed Ali Naqvi, a Muslim from Pakistan have made one of this year's most talked about films.
