We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
Possible US envoy says India must get assurance against China.
Although the Supreme Court has mandated the Centre to conduct the polls by the end of September, a spate of terrorist attacks in J&K could cause delays.
'This incident offers ammunition to those inside the US government and elsewhere who question the wisdom of trusting India, so it will have a lasting consequence no matter how it is managed.'
"Getting the award in the year of Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary is personally significant for me. When 130 crore people take a pledge, any challenge can be overcome," the prime minister said.
'There was a time when a movie star could win an election just by stepping into politics. That era is over.'
Targeting the Congress, the PM said those who ruled Madhya Pradesh for a long time did nothing else other than corruption and crime.
'This is what happens to a party when it gets trapped in the vicious circle of nepotism and dynastic politics'
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced income tax relief for the middle class, a Rs 2 lakh crore outlay for job creation schemes over the next five years and a spending splurge for states run by her party's new coalition partners as she unveiled the Modi 3.0 government's first budget after the general elections.
Along with them, ex-BJP lawmaker Ram Shakal took the oath.
Elections are not won or lost by expounding on such macro-economic matters. For the aam admi, what matters in manifestos are promises that will improve their quality of life, notes Vinayak Chatterjee.
This is the full text of the address to the nation by President Droupadi Murmu on the eve of India's 78th Independence Day.
You don't prep for 2028 but for 2040, or even 2044. Sustained sporting excellence is based on mass support, grassroots development, and funding - and it is this trifecta India needs to work on, systematically, asserts Prem Panicker.
Earlier, Putin had lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and called him a patriot of the country.
'Modi's initial forays into foreign policy had the flavour of Aswamedha Yagas launched by ancient kings to conquer the world.' 'He overcame the hesitations of history and explored unconventional ways to win friends and influence people.' A fascinating excerpt from Ambassador T P Sreenivasan's new book, Modiplomacy -- Through a Shakespearean Prism.
The court also said that if the terms and conditions of most mobile apps are read, "you would be surprised as to what all you are consenting to".
The prime minister said the country would give befitting response to every terrorist.
'The pandemic had a significant impact on child trafficking.' 'With economic hardships, traffickers exploited the situation to target desperate parents and children.'
'India's specific concerns about whether Russia will be a reliable defense supplier and diplomatic partner in the event of heightened hostilities with China has undoubtedly accelerated the process of US-India defense and intelligence cooperation intended to support Indian military positions along the Line of Actual Control.'
India on Wednesday voted in favour of a draft resolution tabled in the UN Human Rights Council that condemns and strongly rejects recent "public and premeditated" acts of desecration of the Quran.
The Union home ministry on Thursday recommended a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the affairs of the Indian arm of the global NGO Oxfam for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, sources said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will set a record by presenting the sixth Budget in a row -- 5 annual Budgets and one interim -- a feat achieved so far only by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. With the presentation of interim Budget on February 1, Sitharaman will surpass the records of her predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five budgets in a row. Desai, as Finance Minister, had presented five annual Budgets and one interim Budget between 1959-1964. The interim Budget 2024-25 to be presented by Sitharaman on February 1, will be a vote-on-account that will give the government authority to spend certain sums of money till a new government comes to office after the April-May general elections.
India has also taken note of reports of Saeed's son Talha contesting elections in Pakistan and said the "mainstreaming" of radical terror outfits in the neighbouring country is nothing new and that it has been part of its State policy for a long time.
The 54-page document tabled in Parliament detailed how the Modi-government pull the economy from being counted among the most fragile-five in the world to being the fasted growing and the most attractive investment destination.
Gandhi called for the need to reconsider the country's economic policy as the one that encouraged industrialisation and urbanisation, causing "huge population unsettlement" and forcing farmers to migrate to the cities in large numbers, only spurred the COVID-19 pandemic.
...and say bye to the humanities-science divide, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
The government had earlier announced the country's highest civilian honour for L K Advani and Karpoori Thakur.
The leaders alleged that those who had no contribution in the freedom struggle wanted to spread fear 'in the name of nationalism', suppress the voice of people and were questioning the legacy of Congress.
A prominent Indian diaspora body has urged various agencies of the US government, universities and student associations to work towards addressing the spike in the deaths of Indian-origin students in the US in recent months.
'The fact that India is multilingual and the kids grow up already bilingual or trilingual so learning another language or learning other spelling patterns is not really that hard.'
'I see a virtually zero impact on the sales of new vehicles with this move,' said an expert
Arshdeep Singh has incurred the wrath of social media users since Sunday when he dropped a catch in the closing stages of a tense India-Pakistan match.
India has surpassed China to become the world's most populous nation with 142.86 crore people, shows the latest United Nations data, even as UN projections estimate that the country's population is expected to grow for the next three decades after which it will begin declining.
Ranveer Singh, Kriti Sanon and Manish Malhotra visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi to offer prayers over the weekend.
"The policy draft has been approved. The ministry has been renamed as education ministry," a senior HRD ministry official said. The existing NEP was framed in 1986 and revised in 1992. A new education policy was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto ahead of the 2014 general election.
'Rhetoric and chest-thumping are running high on India's recent growth record.'
'But will the giant waves developing elsewhere allow us to sail smoothly into fair winds?' asks Debashis Basu.
The verdict in the Google versus Epic Games antitrust case in the US has spread cheer among the Indian gaming and app developers. Ending a three-year legal battle, the San Francisco jury found that Google turned its Play app store and billing service into an illegal monopoly. American video game maker Epic Games, best known for Fortnite, had sued Google in 2020.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India's economic growth is a 'natural by-product' of his nine-year-old government's political stability, as he expressed optimism that it will be a developed nation by 2047 with 'corruption, casteism and communalism' having no place in our national life.
Charging NGOs like Greenpeace with violating Indian laws, the RSS on Sunday called US as "the global police of democracy" and questioned its defence of the two organisations.
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