'Our problem is not a budget deficit but a trust deficit. We need to trust our institutions and industries to innovate and lead. That is the way forward for India.'
'The US reciprocal tariff has added another element of uncertainty and the central bank may prefer to wait and get further clarity.'
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said there is no need to panic about COVID-19 cases, even as she asserted that the hospitals were fully prepared to tackle if the number rises.
After spending nearly 50 years in a colonial bungalow at 24, Akbar Road, the Congress moved into a new office on January 15. Rasheed Kidwai, who knows the history of the Congress better than the Congress, looks back at the people who breathed life into this address.
Many were hoping that with Vajpayee's NDA gone, there would be a return to the Congress normal. Nobody was prepared for the opposite. Sonia Gandhi was sceptical. This became the only issue over which Manmohan Singh took on his party bosses and risked his government. Politically, it was riskier than the 1991 reform, recalls Shekhar Gupta.
'...still have lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but could have won 140 seats.'
Only in the event of the RSS managing to force Modi into accepting a consensual candidate, will the party not continue to 'being' the 'next Congress', observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
India needs another shot of difficult reform, of the kind only possible at gunpoint. Mr Trump holds that gun to our heads now. A drastic reduction in tariff protection, other elements of sarkari wet-nursing will force entrepreneurial India to become competitive again, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Gupta had alleged that AIIMS had illegally purged his seniority with "malafide intention" to punish him for refusing to act unprofessionally in the autopsy matter.
No single individual, institution, or action is to blame for this. The BJP is responding in kind -- definitely not without checking with its government. And they wait for Mr Trump, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'To attribute motives to the individual election commissioner or the Election Commission as a group is very unfair.'
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should opt for an honourable exit by resigning from the top post -- in the wake of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's outburst against the Union government's ordinance on convicted legislators -- believes Bharatiya Janata Party's senior leader Arun Jaitley.
It's not that rapes are happening only in Uttar Pradesh. On Tuesday alone, four rape cases were reported across Rajasthan. The rape victims in the desert state include two minor girls, an elderly woman, a child and a transgender.
'There was trust, but perhaps there was also this apprehension that given the supreme post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi felt her authority may be a challenged.'
'Politics is a game of public perception and my father felt that by his long disappearances, Rahul Gandhi was losing the battle of perception.'
The dinner Jill Biden and her husband US President Joe Biden hosted for Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, June 22, at the White House brought together, Indians and Americans from so many firmaments.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
Many of the stories, the pictures going out of India worldwide lately with these provocative processions, taunting of Muslims, bulldozers targeting mostly their properties, the sweeping 'othering' of a community of 200 million are painting the front pages and TV screens in the democratic world. That is where most of the friends we covet lie. Soon enough, these will also make our vital friends among the Muslim nations, from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, uneasy. The best time for course correction is now, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Would Ukraine be such a pushover if it had that nuclear stockpile?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Ambassador Venu Rajamony, who served as press secretary to President Pranab Mukherjee during his tenure, salutes the statesman and political legend, who passed into the ages on Monday.
'The BJP has shown signs lately of returning to its trader mindset.' 'Several strong emotions get meshed in this: Nationalism, protectionism, mercantilism, and arrogance,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
The organisers of Modi's Silicon Valley event will have only a few hours to get the stage ready after the Shark Tanks' ice hockey game at the SAP Centre ends.
In the mid-1980s, India and the US struggled to arrive at sufficient confidence for Washington to even sell a supercomputer to India for monsoon prospecting. Now, the most sensitive military technologies, data, and intelligence resources are being shared. This would not have happened without that one, big deal that changed the fundamentals of India-US relations, notes Shekhar Gupta.
As the dust finally settles on the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and Bharatiya Janata Party along with its NDA allies emerges as the clear winner, here is a list of who won in each of the 7 phases of elections.
'The petition has become infructuous as the Election Commission has taken decisions on the complaints'
How Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar find themselves in a huge controversy.
'Ludicrous they might be, but they are not without threats -- much like letters that appear suddenly in homes of those opposing the government.' 'One must exercise some caution before believing in them,' says Uttaran Das Gupta.
A lowdown on what's going on in the Telugu film industry.
It was never the quality of the CV that defined an incumbent's performance or legacy.
'This health emergency has brought a lot of people together with the common purpose of getting Feluda to play detective as quickly as possible.' 'As a scientist, if we can make a small difference in people's lives, we are happy'
The Sports Ministry confirmed on Thursday that it will stick to the original list of winners for the Khel Ratna and Arjuna awards, thereby dashing discus thrower Krishna Poonia's hopes of being conferred the country's highest sporting honour.
'Indian secularism doesn't deserve a tombstone. It needs a new shrine,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
Modi has the ideas for a new, hopeful India, and an idiom in which to sell optimism to voters. But he doesn't yet have the team for it, and soon enough, questions will begin to be asked by an impatient, non-ideological, I-don't-owe-anybody-anything generation of Indian voters, says Shekar Gupta.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
The strategic success of the surgical strikes has not matched their brilliant tactical achievement, says Shekhar Gupta.
'In India a strong leader with a majority has never yet been defeated by a challenger.' 'He (or she, as with Indira Gandhi in 1977) must defeat himself,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Never lose your optimism. Never lose your aspiration and never -- even if India becomes a prosperous consumer society -- never ever lose that shining light in your eyes,' advises Dr Peter McLaughlin, headmaster of the Doon School.
If the Congress can simply go from 110 million to 130 million votes, it will yield a very different kind of NDA.
'When war is thrust on you as in 1962 and 1965 or is tempting as in 1971, ensure that all other fronts are kept quiet, leaving your army free to deal with one,' says Shekhar Gupta.
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