"Prime Minister Modi is not a leader, he is an actor. It would have been better if Amitabh Bachchan was made the prime minister," she said at an election meeting at the end of her roadshow in Mirzapur.
The long-delayed declaration that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will be the Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate for prime minister had a certain air of inevitability about it. But the last-minute drama should not take away from the plain fact that, in naming Modi, the BJP has merely acknowledged that it has in him a politician of rare skill and charisma -- of a degree unseen in national politics perhaps since former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
In May, Satpal Singh, who runs a dairy business with three buffaloes in Jewar, near Noida, was worried about the steep spike in input costs. Singh said dry fodder rates, which cost Rs 1,500-2000 per tractor trolley last year, were quoting at Rs 4,500-5,000. The price of other cattle feed ingredients (that include mustard meal and similar mixes) had also gone up from Rs 2,000 per quintal to Rs 3,100-3,200 per quintal.
Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit won't be afraid to tangle with the toughest of them.
'Unemployment barely figures in the Budget except as a derived demand from the industry and infrastructure.' 'There is no effort at direct attack on unemployment.'
Among the key demands of agitating farmers has been a legal guarantee on minimum support price (MSP). The protest reached a crescendo when thousands of farmers from Punjab and elsewhere marched towards Delhi late last year and decided to block the main entry points once they were denied entry. The Centre, on its part, held 11 rounds of discussions with the protesters and even offered to amend some of the provisions without much success. With now one of their chief demands met, farmers have now moved on to force the government to concede on MSP.
The Planning Commission has not been central to the policy making process since the mid-1960s, says Nitin Desai.
Ethesham Siddiqui (31), lodged in Central Jail at Arthur Road in Mumbai, has also done certificate courses in Urdu, Arabic languages and Human Rights, according to a lawyer from Jamiat-ul-Ulema, which is providing free legal aid to Ethesham and some others accused.
Modi is seen as exceptional not only on account of his acts but also owing to his style. He appears to sacrifice his life for the people -- like a fakir, a figure he came to epitomize even more in 2020 by growing a long white beard. Charisma is above accountability, and Modi has grasped these dynamics.
'Unfortunately, our political class is not interested in making this society equal. They just want to exploit the situation for their own benefit.'
Although demonetisation and improper implementation of GST along with falling prices are being blamed for much of the distress in rural India for some time, experts believe those may not be the only reason.
Some experts says that the high net-worth requirement of Rs 50 crore for setting up an IU is a deterrent.
'India resembles not just the more turbulent bits of its own past, but other 'managed' democracies, where all institutional strength and independence have been hollowed out to serve political power,' notes Mihir S Sharma.
There is a need for better computation of numbers so as to avoid overlaps and capture the net gains to the economy.
There were verbal exchanges between members of Congress and treasury benches after Leader of the Congress Mallikarjun Kharge referred to the food park scrapped by the Narendra Modi government.
An airport in Noida could lead to higher user fees and diversion of traffic from Delhi, which has huge unused capacity.
Loans for Indian airlines have dried up as banks have become cautious to lend to the sector.
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.
Much of the rural recovery story is based on the premise of agriculture doing well. Even if it clocks a growth of 2.5-3 per cent this year, it is still just around 15 per cent of the overall GDP. The non-farm sector, which constitutes a bigger portion of the overall rural economy, is now hampered by disruptions and lockdowns.
Vidya Charan Shukla, a former union minister and Congress veteran from Chhattisgarh, died on Tuesday in a Gurgaon hospital after battling injuries sustained in a deadly naxal attack on a convoy of party leaders a fortnight ago.
'The Congress era was already over anyway! The real question is: Has India opened a new, post-coalition era and I'm very doubtful about that,' Christophe Jaffrelot, author of several books on Indian politics, tells Archana Masih/Rediff.com, analysing Mandate 2014.
'How low GDP would have been, we don't know.' 'It raises serious questions because so many indicators are pointing to such a sharp decline and GDP estimates are still showing 4 per cent growth.'
Bishnoi, a resident of Jorhat who studies in Bhopal, is also the creator of the 'Bulli Bai' app on the platform GitHub as well as the main Twitter account holder of 'Bulli Bai', police said.
The prices of oilseed, coarse cereals & vegetables could also be affected.
'Modi is likely to make more announcements to win or retain popularity, and put himself at the centre of things even more than now,' says T N Ninan.
'Speaking this year from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he excelled himself in content, diction and delivery -- all extemporaneously flowing, replete with felicitous expressions and captivating word play. 'The only other Indian prime minister with whom he stands comparison is Jawaharlal Nehru who too shunned prepared speeches and established instant rapport with his audiences,' says B S Raghavan.
A u-turn by the BJP will be an apocalyptic occurrence in Indian politics and society, argues Amulya Ganguli.
Merely bringing down the government stake below 51% may not find any taker for the PSBs. The government must bring down its holding to at least 26%, recommends Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Even after five decades of use, the telescope at Ooty that Dr Govind Swarup designed and built continues to be the largest single frequency radio telescope in the world.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
He was seen as one of former PM Rao's trusted aides and advisers.
The suit-boot government working at the Centre has in a way imposed an undeclared Emergency in the country, said Shobha Oza.
Though the Union HRD ministry has vehemently denied that Shevgaonkar resigned under government pressure, some allege that this is yet another example of the government exercising its influence over educational institutions
'Modi wants to reverse everything Nehru did, but is shy of touching his daughter's most unwise policies.' 'There is no example of this more stark than bank nationalisation,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Together, they controlled nearly Rs 26 lakh crore of assets at the end of FY16.
During her three-day visit, Priyanka will cover a distance of 100-km by boat in Ganga from Prayagraj to Varanasi.
Rup Narayan Das reveals the towering Odisha leader's role in improving national security after the 1962 War with China.
Before considering reducing the freedom of private investors in the derivatives market, we need to check if the maladies in markets elsewhere exist in India, says Susan Thomas.
Is distance education invalid in MNC companies? asks Nagaraj Shenoy.
'Unless we get the health and economic situations right at the same time, we will not recover.'
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