In remarks that are likely to stoke a controversy, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Friday mocked Narendra Modi's prime ministerial ambitions and said a place will be identified for the Gujarat chief minister to distribute tea in New Delhi.
'Rightly or wrongly, 1962 got ascribed to Krishna Menon and him alone. That's unfair.' 'Certainly, he was one of the guilty men, but he was not the only guilty man. Mistakes were made all around.'
'Amit Shah and his fellow travellers need to realise that India was divided because of competitive communalism of forces like Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, prodded, aided and abetted by the colonial power,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Noting that farmers are suffering due to problems in the food supply chain, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday said there is a need for ensuring better compensation for the farmers against their produce.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf on the futility of the 'who is a Hindu?' debate.
Nitish 'sent his emissary, Prashant Kishor, to me on five different occasions.' 'Kishor seemed to indicate that if I were to assure in writing my party's support to the JD-U, the latter would pull out of the BJP alliance and rejoin the Mahagathbandhan.' A revealing excerpt from Lalu Prasad Yadav's Gopalganj To Raisina: My Political Journey.
'It is from her that present-day political stalwarts continue to draw lessons on testing the limits of Constitutional democracy, and whose slogans even her party's staunchest opponents imitate even after over 30 years of her death,' says Veenu Sandhu.
Days after he attacked Bharatiya Janata Party's PM candidate Narendra Modi over the 2002 riots issue, Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that BJP's "divisive" policy was responsible for spoiling the country's secular fabric and incidents of hate crime.
'We cannot ignore the role of public institutions in driving development... I don't see much focus on institutional renewal.'
'I would personally like to see Rahul Gandhi continue as party president.' 'I genuinely believe he has far more to offer to the party still, particularly in leading us in these challenging times that we find ourselves in.'
'I cannot be audacious to say I am winning, but the mood of the people is in our favour.'
'Is Rahul turning the Congress' covert soft-Hindutva support into overt support now?' 'And if so, following in the BJP's footsteps, is the Congress going to abandon Indian Muslims and Muslim causes altogether?' asks Dr Najid Hussain whose father-in-law former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the Gujarat riots.
Priyanka Gandhi will decide her future role herself, the Congress said on Wednesday downplaying suggestions that she is set to play a larger role in the party ahead of Lok Sabha elections.
Like Nehru, Modi is loathe to touch the public sector. His policy towards Israel leans towards 'non-alignment'. You can find other similarities: frequent public speeches, personalised leadership, total control over foreign and strategic policies, even stylised dressing, says Shekhar Gupta.
A cross-section of people from Tamil Nadu speak of their expectations from Narendra Modi.
At a time when the AIADMK has chosen the late Jaya's personal aide to lead the party, M K Stalin re-enters the scene with greater credibility and better clarity of his own role in the DMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
To remember Jawaharlal Nehru only for his mistakes on Kashmir or China is unfair. A democratic and secular India is in no small measure the awesome legacy of India's first prime minister, says Amberish K Diwanji
Indian law makes it clear that Sonia and Rahul are not related to Robert Vadra, nor is Sonia a relative of Pandit Nehru.
Taking a jibe at the Narendra Modi government over its 'Clean India Mission', Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday alleged that angry people are running the nation.
Stating that India is new bright spot of hope and opportunity for the world, the prime minister said India among other things is igniting the engines of its manufacturing sector and making its farms more productive and more resilient.
'This generation has seen no communication.' 'You have not given them any stake.' 'They don't have a feeling of belonging.' 'They have only seen a man in uniform with a gun.' 'That is why it is taking a more vicious form today -- the attacks on the security forces and the retaliation is causing heavy loss of lives.'
'Nehru had multiple chances to make compromises, that would have preserved a united India, and he chose not to,' Nisid Hajari tells Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
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Can the leaky public distribution system, or PDS, deliver the subsidised grain to two-thirds of the population?
Educationist Dr Shashi K Pande on how he sees India, and how he would like to see it change.
'The Congress is unsure of emerging as the single largest party or group on May 16. In such a scenario, they do not wish to accord a loser tag to the young Gandhi... The Congress feels Rahul's projection as a prime ministerial nominee in 2014 would come in the way of the formation of an alternative, non-BJP government...' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt explains how the transition of power within the Congress is making the party vulnerable.
'There is no evidence that it was Nehru who ordered this surveillance (on Netaji's kin). It was a very low-level Bengal-based operation.' 'Netaji's grandnephew Sugata Bose has written in his book on the leader that the existing evidence that Subhas Bose died in that plane crash is overwhelming. No historian looking at that evidence can come to a different conclusion.' 'Contrary to popular belief, there were very little differences among the three (Netaji, Nehru and Gandhi). Netaji was of the opinion that some amount of violence was necessary to bring independence for India.' Historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee says that the controversy over the alleged spying on the kin of Netaji is a damp squib.
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In the last 10 years, when the people looked at New Delhi, they saw two centres of power and not one decisive leader between them. There was nobody who could speak in a language people wanted to hear. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt reveals the true reason why the UPA appears rudderless on the eve of Election 2014.
'... 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.
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
Narendra Modi's mother washed utensils to make a living. Madhusudan Mistry's grandmother, who brought him up, was a vegetable vendor. Mistry's trajectory from poverty to membership of the all powerful Congress Working Committee is moving. the man who has Rahul Gandhi's ear and is all set to take on Narendra Modi in Vadodara, speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt in a fascinating interview.
Arun Jaitley and Janardan Dwivedi have rewritten the rules of politics in the Age of the Internet and its young and restless user base, reports Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
