'Vajpayee was the first prime minister to visit the battlefield at the height of conflict,' recalls Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The nullifying of the NJAC Act has put the spotlight on the Judiciary. Concepts like transparency, being open to change, leading from front, management of perceptions that were reserved for the Executive earlier are now relevant for the Judiciary as well, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'Most likely scenario is Modi comes back with either a much smaller majority and no majority at all and a coalition.' 'Very hard to imagine him doing better than he did last time.' 'He will then be a weaker prime minister,' the author of The Billionaire Raj tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
'Of all the PMs of India, I had the closest relationships with Morarji and Rajiv.' Mark Tully, the most famous foreign correspondent in India, remembers some encounters with prime ministers, dictators and militants.
'Nehru's hegemonic politics has been responsible for many ills, which undoubtedly includes Kashmir'
'It is very hard to get the police to file a report against someone from an upper caste.' 'Things are so bad that sometimes we have to sit on a dharna with the body of a Dalit victim to get the police to file a complaint.'
India on Thursday slammed Pakistan for making "absurd" charges of a chip, camera or a recorder being installed in the footwear of the wife of Jadhav.
Her great grandfather began sugar co-operatives in Maharashtra. Her grandfather was an eight time MP. Her uncle is currently leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly. Her cousin joined the BJP on Tuesday, March 12. Nila Vikhe Patil, who could one day become prime minister of Sweden, unravels her India connections in an e-mail interaction with Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
While many praised Narendra Modi's US Congress address, Syed Firdaus Ashraf had only two words to say: SO WHAT?
'Even if Akhilesh Yadav opens up the entire state treasury for us we will not vote for the Samajwadi Party... ''...I don't want to return to my village, my head will be chopped off. They want me to press the button on the lotus.' Caught between an aggressive BSP cornering Dalit votes and the BJP cornering other Hindu votes, the Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt presents the grim situation on the ground in western Uttar Pradesh.
'The success or otherwise of Modi's foreign policy will largely depend on the equation he is likely to strike with Donald Trump.'
Tarun Vijay on why the victory in Uttar Pradesh belongs to Narendra Modi and the road ahead.
'The sadhus and sanyasis of UP are not for any economics.' 'They only know the religious agenda and the RSS will support them.' 'Modi does not have full control of the party at the ground level like Indira Gandhi had.'
'The animosity in the BJP against Swamy continued for a good more than thirty years.' 'It was only after herculean efforts by a reconstituted and more just RSS, that Swamy was finally inducted into the BJP in 2013.'
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first trip to New York as leader of the world's most populous democracy, will draw perhaps the largest crowd ever by a foreign leader on US soil when he takes the stage on Sunday in Madison Square Garden before a crowd forecast to total more than 18,000 people.
'Politicians have always dealt in lies and propaganda.'
'But the scale of the propaganda and the impunity with which it is being unleashed now is stunning,'
If only Mahabharat was a made-for-radio special instead of a half-heartedly animated demo reel masquerading as a children's fantasy, writes Sukanya Verma.
'It is a reassertion of their lost martial stride, of a history that is papered over by turning it into a memory largely of the upper castes.'
The prime minister, says Ram Kelkar, could do a lot to advance his stature as a national leader by speaking in strong and unequivocal terms on the subject of opposing intolerance and emphasizing the rule of law, thereby setting the tone for the nation and the party.
Even in this season of political-peeing-on-lampposts, Rahul Gandhi's statement takes the cake (with due apologies to another astute observer of poverty, the much late Mary Antoinette).
'We still look at films with A-listers.' 'There is change, but it's minor.' 'We still haven't learnt how to invest in stories.'
'An America at war with itself, groaning under a mounting debt, with woolly-headed economic policies of a neophyte president who is more feared and suspected among the comity of nations does not augur well for the world.' 'It would be well justified in asking,' says Shreekant Sambrani, '"Is this how you expect to make America great again, Mr President?"'
'If Ruttie had been alive, Jinnah would never have turned communal.'
'So you have a middle class, and an elite that have seceded into outer space and they look down and say, "What's our bauxite doing in their mountains?" and "What's our water doing in their rivers?" There's a sense of entitlement there.' Arundhati Roy captures minds with her thoughts on capitalism, Indian politics, war, and more in New York.
'The BJP currently occupies the centre stage of Indian politics, much the way the Congress did in the 1970s. That may be comforting to the party, but it could also be the road to perdition of easy self-congratulation and sycophancy.'
'I am happy that Aurangzeb will no longer dance before my eyes as I jog down A P J Abdul Kalam Road. Instead, the serene, saintly, smile of the late beloved President will bless me when I take an evening stroll there.'
'The man stood alone, fought alone.' 'Some of those battles appeared Quixotic at times.' 'Ultimately, it was he who won though it may have seemed as if a Sancho Panza was fighting a relentless battle against the windmill.' N Sathiya Moorthy salutes the fearless editor who has passed into the ages.
More than Guru Dronacharya, the cult of his wife, Kripi, runs stronger in Gurgaon.
Drought or no drought... life goes in the water-starved Beed district in Maharashtra's Marathwada region
Muslims constitute 20% of UP's electorate. Currently, Muslim voters are divided between Akhilesh's SP and Mayawati's BSP. What will tilt the balance? Can Muslims back the winning party? Mohammad Sajjad explains the mysteries of UP's Muslim politics.
And no, the commercial sporting leagues didn't cause the drought, says Shekhar Gupta.
'I don't think I will have a release in 2015.' Aamir Khan talks business, and PK.
'A close look at the time-lines tells you that exactly as the back-channel negotiations were in their most crucial stage, "somebody" was planning the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai,' says Shekhar Gupta questioning Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's account of a peace deal with India.
'Only on two occasions has the RSS thrown itself completely on the side of the BJP.' 'In 1977 in the wake of the Emergency. And in 2014 with Modi.' 'Now, I've been told that this is not going to happen in 2019.'
Sudheendra Kulkarni pays tribute to friend, poet and Dalit activist Namdeo Dhasal who passed into the ages on Wednesday.
'High denomination cash notes which was 1.4 lakh crores of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in 2004 became Rs 15.5 lakh crores in 2016.' 'If it had been allowed, by 2022, it would have been Rs 34 lakh crores, and that would have been the end of the Indian economy.' 'Demonetisation was a huge hit on the head of the economy, but without the hit, you could not U-turn the economy.'
If terror indeed has no religion, no partisan affiliations, and if the government, media and all right-minded people in this country people truly believe that, let us not call one blast a "terrorist incident" and dismiss another one as a mere "cylinder blast" just because it is politically convenient, says Shehzad Poonawala.'If terror indeed has no religion, no partisan affiliations, and if the government, media and all right-minded people in this country truly believe that, let us not call one blast a "terrorist incident" and dismiss another one as a mere "cylinder blast" just because it is politically convenient,' argues Shehzad Poonawalla.
'While military acts such as the Uri surgical strikes are one option, cultural, economic and diplomatic isolation should also be part of the arsenal,' argues Sankrant Sanu.
Lunch with BS: Sukhbir Singh Badal, deputy chief minister, Punjab
Dharmendra Kumar Singh explains the four major factors that contributed to Modi's win in the 2014 elections.
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