It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
Veteran Telugu film producer Dr Daggubbati Ramanaidu passed away into the ages on February 18. In an interview he had granted Rediff.com in September 2010, he tells us how he started making movies.
'Only he can bring change in India that all of us have been dreaming of since we saw America for the first time when our plane touched down at JFK airport.' Narendra Modi's friends in New York and New Jersey travel down memory lane and remember a simple man with great ambition. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com tracks down the Modi bhakts, who knew since his first visit in 1993 that he was destined for bigger things.
In embarking on building the world's tallest statue, Modi is hoping his stature will also rise - if not across India then at least in Gujarat, says Bharat Bhushan.
The verdict in the right to privacy case is historic and of global significance because it establishes dharma, righteousness and destroys adharma.
The verdict in the right to privacy case is historic and of global significance because it establishes dharma, righteousness and destroys adharma.
'Good politics is not just staying in power. You cannot sacrifice everything at the altar of trying to ensure the coalition remains in power.'
'The mandals and politicians are trying to project that this is against somebody. We are not against anybody. We do not want the celebrations to stop. It has to happen, but do it in a civilized way.'
The market players are expected to react to the better than expected factory output data for the month of August, which revealed that the industrial production grew by 6.4%.
Be a fox by temperament and a hedgehog by conviction, Gaurav Dalmia tells Bhupesh Bhandari. Then, he explains why.
'The attempt to make Aadhaar mandatory has now emerged as an act of bullying by government agencies, turning citizens into subjects by making fundamental rights conditional on biometric identification,' says Gopal Krishna.
The BJP's panicky return to basic-instinct majoritarianism in Bihar has pushed Muslims back into the 'secular' basement, says Shekhar Gupta.
It has been said that by 2025, India could become among the top five economies in the world. If India does become a $5 trillion economy but gets all its rivers polluted, food chain poisoned and genetic pool depleted and biometric database of Indians sold or stolen at the behest of commercial czars, will it not be a pyrrhic economic victory, asks Gopal Krishna.
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
'Modi's idea of India is to make it less liberal, less tolerant and a less accommodative of diversity.' 'We are headed, if Modi continues, to become an ill liberal democracy.' 'Modi is not Vajpayee. Vajpayee was fundamentally decent, tolerant and fair. He played by the rules of the game. Modi is a different story.'
It's election season in Tamil Nadu and all political parties are tying themselves in knots over the banned jallikattu but none more than the BJP, says R Ramasubramanian.
'If you say I won't talk to them at all, does terrorism stop?' 'Even if they say they will give up terrorism, "I will fight terrorism along with you," but even then you say I still won't talk to you until you do the following things, then that is a political call.'
'Communalism and communal riots happened in India only during and due to colonialism. Pre-colonial India didn't have this problem of communal conflicts and religious strife.'
In an age of patents and intellectual property rights, it would be improper to deny that yoga comes from the Hindu tradition, says Sankrant Sanu.
Buried in a Kolkata cemetery is an Englishman who served India well during her struggle for freedom. Charles Freer Andrews was a benevolent force that neither the Indians, nor the British could ignore.
20 years ago this day, May 11, 1998, India conducted its second nuclear test at Pokharan in Rajasthan. In a fascinating interview on Rediff.com, K Subrahmanyam revealed how Indian PMs reacted to nuclear ambitions.
'Our daughter's name is ANITA-BRIGITTE. She should actually bear the name of AMITA, but the German authorities would have certainly objected to such an unusual name so we chose the name Anita which is almost sounding like Amita.' 'Brigitte was chosen by me because its short form in German is Gita.' Netaji's family had no idea that he had married and had a child till his brother Sarat Chandra Bose received a letter from Emilie Schenkl. A fascinating glimpse from Madhuri Bose's book, The Bose Brothers and Indian Independence, An Insider's Account.
'If the State does want to come after you, in India, it can do pretty much anything. And often it isn't as though the orders are coming from the President or prime minister, no, the systems have been built in a way -- or we have allowed them to be built in a way -- that almost encourages crushing of liberties.'
Who was Mohammad Azharuddin? More crucially, *what* was he? Those are precisely the questions that, as the end credits roll after 132 minutes of run-time, remain unanswered, feels Prem Panicker.
Specially abled Sai Kaustuv Dasgupta talks about how he wants to make his life a message to all the 'wheelchair warriors'.
'If policy-makers hold the lives of animals to be more significant than the welfare of a human populace, I can't believe that they're likely to do anything progressive for India.'
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh interacts with readers on Rediff Chat as he discusses the period that changed India's history, forever.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his Cabinet and inducted 21 new ministers. Of these, 4 - Manohar Parrikar, JP Nadda, Suresh Prabhu and Birender Singh were appointed as Cabinet ministers. Other than this, Modi has inducted 17 other ministers of state. Here's a quick look at them:
Rediff.com gives you a look at newbies in the Council of Ministers
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
'Human rights violations are there in rural areas and in cities. In rural areas it is crude and in the open. In urban areas it is well hidden.' 'Awareness has grown several fold. India has 160 national and state human rights institutions. No other country in the world has this.' 'Unfortunately the right to association, right to assembly, freedom of expression, right to protest and discuss are all being curtailed systematically one by one.'
'How many people have been skilled up and thus able to escape from needing to be in NREGA? The true success of NREGA would lie in its irrelevance -- that is, people no longer need it as a crutch.' 'NREGA should enable them to climb out of poverty and stand on their feet.' 'But this is expressly forbidden by NREGA rules. Skill development, which is what India needs more than anything else, appears to be outside the purview of NREGA,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Why should the people of Odisha divert water from the Mahanadhi when 13 out of 32 districts are chronically drought prone?' 'Water is a state subject. Can you really nationalise rivers for which you need drastic amendments in the Constitution?'
'Asked which Dilip Kumar films were among her favourites, she said she had seen not a single movie of his until that time. This became a sensational issue. She did not mean to offend Dilip Kumar. There was not a bone of diplomacy in her and she never acquired that calculating attitude even at the cost of some of the roles that she would eventually lose.'
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
The veshti controversy in Tamil Nadu is not about the dress -- but a dress-code, which seems permissible in private homes and offices, but not in private clubs that are open only to well-heeled, and well-paying private members, observes N Sathiya Moorthy
'... A youth movement which could really transform our politics in a way that the existing elites don't understand.' 'The more you suppress free expression, the more people will value it.' 'The State can't suppress a young society like India where there are so many interesting new ideas emerging,' says Sunil Khilnani, whose latest book Incarnations looks at Indian history through 50 lives.
'This is not a Sanjay Baru or Natwar Singh type of book. It's not a memoir. It's not a book to reveal conversations, real or imaginary. This is not a book to position myself at the centre of the world.' Jairam Ramesh on his stint as environment minister.
A Texas company will submit a report by June on whether a company controlled by RIL 'stole' natural gas from the wells where ONGC is contracted to operate in the KG basin, as alleged by ONGC.
'He was believed to finish his own work in an hour and spend the remainder of the time walking from one office to another, sitting down with the harried junior staff and helping them sort out the problems they were working on.'
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