'I was very wary about stepping into the limelight and the populist role like Sherlock Holmes, but the minute I saw who was involved and read the script and the quality of it I thought: I've got to do this.' Benedict Cumberbatch tells CNN International why he nearly turned down the chance to play Sherlock Homes.
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'India is doing better than when we took office 17 months ago'.
The military will now demand further pay and promotion parity with civilians
'One one hand, the BJP puts Uniform Civil Code as a goal in its manifesto, and on the other, it pushes massive discrimination against Hindus.' 'This is not sabka saath, sabka vikas. Rather it is "Haj ka saath, church ka vikas",' argues Sankrant Sanu.
'We have a common way of looking at the world, a common way of thinking, and a common set of values that predispose us to be partners. And our interests overlap greatly,' Dr Ashton B Carter, America's next defence secretary, told Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
But when organisations cushion the impact to make it less traumatic, it helps in the recovery process, Wayne F Cascio tells Abhilasha Ojha
As Soumitra Chatterjee turns 80 on January 19, we look back at his best movies.
Manipur needs an integrated politico, military, socio-economic approach, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke about success, surviving loss and failure to the graduating class of 2016 at UC Berkeley.
Jaitley has managed the difficult feat of sticking to the fiscal correction.
From Kudankulam to the Land Bill, the author takes the Twitter route to capture the infra action of 2013.
Even US equities are now back to end-2014 levels.
'As a governor, I have every right to speak my mind if I feel the security of my country is at stake.' 'Why is it that we would have to shed tears when Muslims are killed or tortured, but have to keep mum when the Hindus receive the same treatment?'
Money is being released and the government knows it will have to front-run private investment.
Indian scientists who wrote to the PM last week are not entirely rejecting GMOs but instead asking for caution and further testing to establish their safety.
The Budget is remarkably coherent.
Mittal would travel in trucks with his consignments.
'We eat first, they later; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we call them by their names and they address us by titles,' writes Tripti Lahiri, author of Maid in India.
The recent agreement between the RBI and the Centre marks a significant step forward toward financial inclusion.
Gajendra Chauhan is just one the many troubles that ail the national film institute. But all may not be lost yet.
Smart cities can provide more safety, better management of traffic congestion, a low-carbon environment and better services.
A Muslim man taking a PhD in a dance form is not unusual, but it becomes interesting when the dance happens to be Mohiniyattam, says Shobha Warrier
If money allocations, investment commitments are a sign of better things to come, the state can be optimistic.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
'Our Indian culture system is very family oriented.' 'We value and respect the decisions of our parents to a great extent.' 'That can be a pro or con.' 'It's up to the parents to gauge how much motivation, pressure or space a child needs.' 'Every child is different.' 'We are all unique and that is what I intend to drive home to parents.'
'We will have to wait till the snows melt in June/July 2016 before we can get a clearer idea of whether Pakistan intends to get serious about ending support for cross-border terrorism,' says G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan.
'I want to leave behind the bank stronger and better than when I took over.'
'I got the script of OMG: Oh My God and I believed in it so much that I quit my job. Singh Is Bliing was a success but it was not a film that made a difference.' Meet Ashvini Yardi.
Boosted by handsome royalty from oil facilities at Barmer, the Rajasthan government has spent nearly Rs 30,000 crore on various social welfare schemes in the last four-and-a-half years. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot tells Business Standard's Mayank Mishra that the state's better performance on various socio-economic indices is a result of that. The excerpts:
'There is no change in the overall story of economic recovery.'
The euphoria of Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar will fade quickly if the Modi government does not raise its game, and focus significant monetary resources and managerial skills on making India's infrastructure truly world-class, says Ram Kelkar.
Education remains one of the key focuses of the new government.
'Not allowing people to speak or listen is the biggest act of anti-nationalism,' says Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, one of India's finest poets.
Slamming Narendra Modi for his charge of 'criminal negligence of security' at his rally, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday dubbed his Gujarat counterpart as an "expert in cultivation of falsehood" and said terrorists in a way helped the Bharatiya Janata Party in its "otherwise flop" rally.
Recent investigations into the telecom spectrum and coal scams have made bureaucrats very wary of taking decisions.
Aseem Chhabra picks his favourite movies from the Telluride Film Festival.
Do Modi's foreign visits actually serve India or they nothing more than expensive tools for domestic positioning and image-building, asks Shehzad Poonawalla.
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.
'It's very expensive for a girl to become an actress. I remember I was nominated at all the award shows for Tanu Weds Manu, and conscientiously, like a new actress, I attended all of them and I was bankrupt by the end of it! I had to find a costume stylist, a hair stylist, a makeup stylist...!' Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff.com gets inside Swara Bhaskar's mind.
