'China's growing nexus with Pakistan and the two countries' unresolved territorial disputes with India continue to pose a formidable national security threat to India,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Excerpts from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the Combined Commanders Conference on board the INS Vikramaditya at sea, off the coast of Kochi.
Raghuram Rajan rejected the argument that inflation has come down largely because of "good luck" stemming from low oil prices.
2015 will be a real test for Modi govt.
The rally in Indian market is mainly due to resumption of foreign institutional investor inflows.
It has been said that by 2025, India could become among the top five economies in the world. If India does become a $5 trillion economy but gets all its rivers polluted, food chain poisoned and genetic pool depleted and biometric database of Indians sold or stolen at the behest of commercial czars, will it not be a pyrrhic economic victory, asks Gopal Krishna.
'The choice of chief minister after the win is a pointer to what issues really mattered at the polls.' 'Perhaps, demonetisation was an electoral side issue -- a reflection of the disconnect between commentators in the cities and the realities on the ground,' says Somasekhar Sundaresan.
Enrich a woman and you can enrich a nation. Hurt women, deny women equitable rights, and a nation's death sentence will soon commence, says Dr Krishan Jeyarajasingham.
We're behaving like frogs in warm water. We swim around untroubled, cooled by our faith in Indian liberal democracy. We are blind to the bubbles popping around us, the bubbles warning of fundamental changes, says Mihir S Sharma.
'Given the present force levels, India cannot fight and win.' 'India can't hope to terminate the conflict on India's terms and impose the nation's will upon the adversaries,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
The euphoria of Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar will fade quickly if the Modi government does not raise its game, and focus significant monetary resources and managerial skills on making India's infrastructure truly world-class, says Ram Kelkar.
'When he first came to office, my belief is that the PM's reading of the landscape was that, with a vanquished Congress and fragmented Opposition, he was looking at least at two terms in office. This reading perhaps allows for a more cautious, gradual approach.' 'It was only a matter of time before the government was forced to come face-to-face with a serious corruption scandal. This is not a commentary on the BJP, but a statement about India's political economy.' 'There is growing concern about the government's commitment to freedom of expression, religious tolerance, and an independent civil society. Thus far, the positive movement on strategic and economic matters has crowded out these concerns, but they are lingering beneath the surface.'
'Continuity in a common agenda is essential, not to disrupt the progress achieved so far,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
After weighing all the costs and benefits, the next administration is likely to reduce and restructure assistance to Pakistan but not to end it altogether, says Daniel S Markey.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay offers some unsolicited advice for a government wh,ich came to power, with brute majority and the nation's pragmatic chief money man.
The former McKinsey India head is presently on board of many big Indian conglomerates.
'When George Bush Senior decided in 1992 that India and the United States must start talking in this-now-changed world, who would have thought that 10, 15 years down the road, we will start looking at each other as strategic partners?'
Addressing the plenary session of the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit here in the Mongolian capital, Vice President Hamid Ansari said, "all our societies today face unprecedented levels of threat from terrorism in all its manifestations. The most recent example is what has happened, most unfortunately in France."
The virus had broken out in the lead-up to the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang last Friday and led to some 1,200 security staff being quarantined. Organisers had to call in military personnel to replace them.
.jpg)
Given the 18-day government shutdown in the US and the likelihood for continued wrangling between the Democrats and the Republicans, it now looks like tapering may be off the table till the first quarter of 2014.
'The temptation of governments, to have a finger in the RBI pie will be just too great to resist, unless extensive amendments are carried out in the RBI Act treating it almost as the fourth branch of the government.'
'What should worry India and which needs to be expressed is Russia's simultaneous proximity to both China and Pakistan from a strategic angle. That hasn't happened ever before,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Rediff.com, present to you a dummy's guide to the historic vote that could shape British-EU ties for generations.
How has the Indian State, in principle and practice, given shape to the essential ingredients of the secular principle and composite culture?
What are the most worrisome aspects of climate change for India? Can they be solved?
If the chemistry between Modi and Xi Jinping goes well, it will herald a new future not just for the region but for the world, says Tarun Vijay.
North Korea is unlikely to strike first, but its response in retaliation, if attacked, could be massive even at the expense of its own destruction, says Rajaram Panda.
Traders are waiting for the earnings season to kick off.
'J&K continues to have the highest concentration of military personnel anywhere in the world and the alienation of the Kashmiri has increased in the last ten years than ever before.'
52 world leaders, including Narendra Modi, will attend this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC. Obama will meet separately only with the Chinese president.
'If one observes a common man passing a church or gurdwara or dargah, he instinctively bows his head. It is this prevalence of polytheism that has ensured that monotheists and minorities flourish in India. This may sound preposterous in wake of the recent communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar. But it must be understood that in a county of over one billion people that was at worst an aberration,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Further deterioration of the US-Saudi relationship will have geo-economic and geopolitical effects, says Nitin Pai.
'Pakistan is paying the price for ignoring secularism. In seeking to be ever more Muslim to define its nationhood, it has become a terrorist haven.'
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 73rd Independence Day.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the states were free to announce farm loan waivers if they had the fiscal space and that there would be no shortfall this year in divestment and non-tax revenues.
'In the final analysis, all Budgets everywhere are like the schemes hatched by A A Milne's lovable Winnie-the-Pooh.' 'They may be well-intended, but often go awry.' 'Although Pooh and his friends agree that he 'has very little brain', he is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense.' 'This Budget at a first glance does not appear to belong to that latter category,' says economist Shreekant Sambrani.
'If you destroy the assets in Pathankot, you degrade the combat potential of India; you degrade the war potential of India.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on range of issues -- from Rafale deal to Ram temple and triple talaq.
Then chief minister Jyoti Basu once told an industrialist that capitalists were class enemies and he should expect no sympathy.
