'Modi's investment in the relationship with Washington is the biggest deliverable of this visit. He means business and that's fantastic!'
'Sachin Pilot has revived the Congress.' 'What goes in favour of Ashok Gehlot is experience.'
Trump to sign an executive order aimed at achieving a more skills-based and merit-based immigration system.
That's all it takes to protect an institution -- just one person with no past and no greed for the future, says Shekhar Gupta.
Both Obama and Modi have taken bold steps towards laying the groundwork to give a big push to Indo-US trade, and now it's time to execute, says Bikash Mohapatra.
Rather than talking about Khajuraho and Shikhandi, the argument should be about a Constitution that promised rights to all, says Mihir S Sharma
'The path to a resolution of the ethnic conflict is likely to be complicated and controversial with the majority Sinhalese community, and will become less likely if delayed.' 'It will certainly give Rajapaksa fresh political oxygen with which to revive himself and rally the opposition.'
Let Bihar be damned under its contradictions of having gone 'dry' and then having been submerged under flood, which is a recurrent phenomena? After all it is a godforsaken land, having lost its promises of overcoming its problems, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Disturbingly, the dissenting judgment of the Supreme Court has raised doubts whether religion, race, caste, community, language etc can be separated from politics at all. It has rightly underlined that this question should to be addressed by Parliament rather than the Supreme Court,' says Dr Madhav Godbole, the former Union home secretary.
A DoT panel has backed net neutrality and made some recommendations to push the cause
'If some Europeans do not allow Muslims to assimilate into European national cultures, some Muslims also refuse to try and adopt and assimilate.'
'The temptation of governments, to have a finger in the RBI pie will be just too great to resist, unless extensive amendments are carried out in the RBI Act treating it almost as the fourth branch of the government.'
India has some ability to influence what the world order will look like, but it needs to make structural changes to the ministries of external affairs and commerce, and evolve formal coordination mechanisms with the ministries of finance and home, says Nitin Pai
'We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us.'
'Today the Chinese think they can slap India, and there will be no consequences.' 'They must be made to feel the consequences through any and all means,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
Mark Tully on the India he loves.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'I believe that it can and in the case of Germany it has. What about ourselves? If it were 1971 today, would we accept 10 million refugees from another land?' asks Ambassador B S Prakash.
Terrorism and Afghanistan were the focus points of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov on his first visit to Central Asia.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
'It is just that we have our standards so low that anybody looks good now.' 'His sort of extremely terminological exactitude is a serious problem. He doesn't seem to understand the difference between exclusive economic zones, territorial waters...' 'I am expecting a lot of confusion because of this... Unless Parrikar starts going into the depth of the problems, he is only going to compound the problem rather than resolve it.'
The government has taken a number of steps to address the situation faced by farmers.
'Why do sections of Muslims seem to prefer Lalu and Mulayam who symbolise wilful neglect of governance and development? In this election, secularism is less at stake. What is more at stake is the degenerative, cynical, opportunistic, and discredit-worthy misuse of secularism by the non-BJP leaders and their social constituencies,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'For a long time Pakistan dreamt that India would break up and that it would be the predominant power in the region,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'There is no difference between the earlier government and the present government.' 'They are all following the economic policy based on the Chicago School of thought.' 'This school of thought says the government should have very little role in governing the country and the majority of the work should be handed over to the private sector.' 'This has not succeeded in the US.' 'Yet, it is being tried here by people like Arvind Subramaniam, Arvind Panagariya, Urjit Patel and Raghuram Rajan.'
The Bill comes at a time when prospective home buyers are avoiding under-construction projects, almost everywhere in the country, thereby drying up sources of interest-free funds for debt-ridden developer firms
'LIC's proposed investment will come out of what is technically called the 'policyholders funds'.' 'As the name implies, these monies belong to policyholders; that is, you, me and 25 crore others who have taken a total of 30 crore policies from LIC.' 'It is not the government's or LIC's money to play poker with,' says S Muralidharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday addressed the nation on the eve of the 68th Independence Day.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lauded the Central Bureau of Investigation as it completed 50 years during an address to senior officers at the at international conference on 'Evolving common strategies to combat corruption and crime.'
A group of retired civil servants also called upon the PM to reach out to the families of the victims in Unnao and Kathua and "seek their forgiveness on behalf of all of us".
Reason must triumph over blind faith, says Praful Bidwai in this tribute to murdered rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.
'Everybody was ready to agree with the government if the process to acquire land was a judicious one. All of us want industrialisation and development of the country.'
'It is the regional parties and their leaders who are the ones we have to watch.'
'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.'
Five longtime Republicans -- K V Kumar, Puneet Ahluwalia, Suhail Khan, Ajay Kuntamukkala and Harry Walia -- have been named to the GOP's Asian Pacific American Advisory Council.
The idea is to make unexceptionable broad promises so as to have the maximum freedom to devise policies if and when the opportunity arises, says Subir Roy.
India has made a remarkable journey from a top-down system of economic decision-making to one that unleashed our entrepreneurial spirits but the next big jump lies in enhancing the quality of our tale.
Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in mankind's history has such an idea taken the concrete shape in form of a law. The National Food Security Bill, which will come via ordinance and not after the debate in Parliament, is an incredible economic tool to tackle the hunger of poor Indians. Also, it has already been condemned widely as a political gimmick.
Yale University has issued a statement saying that Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani attended a weeklong programme and received a certificate from the university last year, along with several other lawmakers from India. George Joseph/Rediff.com reports from New York
