'It was Maulana Azad's foresight which created the IITs, UGC, science academies across the country.'
'Our record and our actions and stances is fairly clear and by criticising it repeatedly, it doesn't make us less credible'
India has once again pressed for the devolution of powers to the provinces under the 13th amendment (13A) of the Sri Lankan constitution and the system of provincial councils as a meaningful step towards better representation of the island's Tamil minority.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in Washington, DC, ahead of the first in-person Quad meeting to be hosted by US President Joe Biden and discussed a broad range of issues of bilateral, regional and global importance, including the Indo-Pacific.
...the BJP's template of operation was different or if the Centre and the state were ruled by dissimilar parties? asks Shyam G Menon.
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
A closure of the Indian mission in Kabul will be a Himalayan blunder at this historic juncture when the wheels of diplomacy and politics are set to accelerate in Afghanistan, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
'The continuing crisis in agriculture, the inability of successive governments to provide secure jobs to millions of youths having varying degrees of skills, and fragmentation of politics have created a sense of despondency.'
Leaders of 22 opposition parties met the Election Commission and demanded verification of VVPAT slips of randomly-selected polling stations before the counting of the votes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday that international travel should be made easier through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates, amid several countries adopting different sets of rules to allow foreigners to enter their territory in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
India's first indigenous aircraft carrier will be commissioned next year and its combat capability, reach and versatility will add formidable capabilities in the country's defence, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in Kochi on Friday.
Seven years is a long time for any of Modi's promised actions to show up. If voters are angry and cynical today, it is because the rhetoric stings, argues Ramesh Menon.
A confrontation with the Taliban in Kabul in this fading light of a twilight zone would have been sheer madness, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The really striking thing is that the Taliban has suo moto presented to us certain firm benchmarks against which it expects us to hold to account the Taliban rulers's actions in the period ahead' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
After years of preparations, the Centre has withdrawn the nomination of Delhi as the UNESCO World Heritage City.
Modi also berated the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress combine in Bihar, calling it an alliance of "double-double yuvraj" (two crown princes) whose sole concern was to protect their "respective thrones".
If the Opposition has any chance at the prime minister's job, it can happen only if they all stop dropping names and work at the grassroots-level, state-wise, suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
'If things don't work on the ground and they continue moving at this pace, it will vanish.'
The report, released on June 21, alleged that some senior leaders of the BJP "made inflammatory speeches against minority communities".
'The government that is talking all the time about national security and national interests should be concerned.' 'When national interests are jeopardised by their own project, they should pause and listen.' 'Whether it is the BJP or the Congress, they all want control over the people.' 'They don't give a damn if anything happens to the people of the country; they are only interested in what they can get out of the data.'
Indian 'Vedas' have since thousands of years considered sun as at soul of the universe and a nourisher of life, the PM said.
"They should go wherever they want," Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar said on Thursday when asked of Prashant Kishor and Pavan Verma's repeated questions about the party's stand's on the newly enacted Citizenship Act.
The road ahead will be long and winding and much resistance can be expected from the high-flying 'hawks' in our skies. But that should not deter the policymakers from planning a road map with the 'big picture' in mind, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Corporate India tempered its victory celebrations for the supposedly business-friendly Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance's landslide electoral victory by highlighting the need for immediate steps to create jobs through inclusive economic growth.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
The flawed Indian policy toward Afghanistan is missing the woods for the trees. The Modi government doesn't have a 'big picture', observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's systemic dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
India and the US also made a strong push for the intra-Afghan peace process to end violence in Afghanistan and ensure that it does not become home to terrorism, and vowed to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and on COVID-19 response and economic recovery.
The alacrity with which regional States responded to Delhi's invite signals that expectations are high regarding an Indian role in the efforts to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Modi is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Xi on Tuesday.
'Defence does not new 'planning commissions'; it needs an implementation commission.'
Indonesia, Turkey and Afghanistan also see important polls in the seven short weeks between end-March and mid-May, says Shankar Acharya
The Opposition must understand that while 2024 may draw mileage from the growing resentment towards the BJP, the real battle and proof of how well India learnt from its disastrous dalliance with the Right-wing, will be in 2029, observes Shyam G Menon.
Swaraj emphasised that the UN must accept it needs fundamental reform.
The BJP's manifesto speaks about the Prime Minister's vision of making 'Atmanirbhar Bihar'.
Of the three major Budget announcements related to the banking sector, privatisation of PSBs is the most audacious, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'India does not wish to remain silent in improving its strategic space so that its leverage to counter China's expansionist designs is maintained, besides enabling it to play a responsible role from a position of strength for peace and stability in Asia,' points out Dr Rajaram Panda.
Voters deserve one. Democracy requires one. We need an alternative that people want, not just an anti-vote, says Mitali Saran.
The finance ministry has put out a revised draft in public domain.
'History will never forgive Manmohan Singh for having ended the Indian growth story and created a culture of entitlement instead of creating a culture of hard work and development,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
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