'She was the only prime minister who won a decisive military victory.' 'She won a real war; she didn't play video games on prime time TV over surgical strikes!' 'She understood power better than any other politician, saw it as her birthright and used it with inborn expertise.' 'Every politician today who tries to be a "supremo" through populism and absolute control over his or her party is referring to the Indira Gandhi playbook!'
'If you destroy the assets in Pathankot, you degrade the combat potential of India; you degrade the war potential of India.'
'I could have never imagined any other prime minister giving time to a separatist leader.' 'I think the Hurriyat should not be ignored. I think like Pakistan, they are being unnecessarily ignored.' A S Dulat, the former RA&W chief who visited Kashmir recently, speaks to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Choose a career that motivates you and one that you are good at, says Prof RSS Mani, education consultant and vice president-institutional development, ITM Group of Institutions.
If the radical Islamic movement had been largely peaceful, Headley would have probably found another way to ensure real life excitement.' 'But I really do believe that his relationship with radical Islam is real. Very real.' 'It was a match for his desires.'
'I have never seen the Kashmiris in a more conciliatory mood or a more defensive and reasonable mood than I did when I went there in May. All of them said, "raasta nikaliye".' 'Farooq Abdullah has said hundreds of times that the LoC has to be recognised as the international boundary. So that is where the solution lies, it lies on the LoC.' A S Dulat, former RAW chief, explains why he is perplexed by the Modi government's decision to call off foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan.
In the pitch dark of the African night, a herd of cape buffaloes gather at the watering hole for a drink, taking care to stay by the edge to avoid the crocodiles lurking in the depths. In Gangiova, a village in Romania, a doctor places her stethoscope to the chest of a newborn baby, listening intently for the beating of his tiny heart. These are just some of the moments that have been picked by the judges for the Sony World Photography Awards. For the 2017 competition, photographers entered 227,596 images across the awards' Professional, Open and Youth categories. The Open competition winner will receive $5,000 (Rs 3.3 lakh), Sony digital imaging equipment and flights and accommodation to the awards ceremony at Somerset House in London. Sony World Photography Awards has been kind enough to share some of their shortlisted pieces with us.
The Mars mission is overwhelmingly irrelevant to space science and won't advance the frontiers of knowledge. It will divert attention from the real technological challenges facing the Indian space programme, and will further distort our science and technology priorities, says Praful Bidwai.
The IPL has produced more controversies in its short lifespan than any other sporting league in history.
Indian economy about to take-off
'The obsession of the Pakistan army with India leads to several destabilising things. Support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Support for groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, that have attacked India. Every time you get an attack like that there is a possibility of a war. And then the build up of the their nuclear arsenals. Chances of a nuclear weapon landing in the hands of a terrorist group, or a nuclear war breaking out, are tiny. But they are higher here than anywhere else in the world.'
Anti-conversion laws are needed since thrusting the idea of a competitive battlefield of religion onto India's pluralistic traditions can only lead to greater communal conflict, says Sankrant Sanu
Anurag Singal, founder of cajobportal, a job site that caters exclusively to CAs and commerce graduates tells us how he aims to skill and enable satisfactory employment to aspiring professionals.
Back in September 2002, Shakti Bhatt/Rediff.com located the former Union Carbide chairman's luxury home in New York, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments. Rediff.com reproduces the feature about his life in hiding.
My goal is to implement the Sevak project all over India and make the villages true Gandhian villages -- self sustainable in every way, including health, says Dr Thakor Patel, head of the American Association of Physician of Indian Origin's Public Health Committee. Aziz Haniffa reports
Finance Minister P Chidambaram, while addressing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on "Recapturing India's Growth Momentum" in Washington on Thursday, said that the leading think tank need not launch an initiative to explore how India will vote in 2014, declaring that the Indian polity will vote the Congress back into power.
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.
Rediff.com digs into its archives, tracking down Dr M R Rajagopal's sincere efforts of changing lives and changing the way India looks at palliative care.
Those who know Shiv Shankar Menon will vouch that he did lots of things, substantial in the immediate neighbourhood and widespread in South Asia, but without making things public. Twenty per cent of Menon's job was visible, while 80 per cemt of his job was not known to the public, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Sri Lanka's signals -- that it is ready for 'joint fishing' initiatives -- and Tamil Nadu fishermen's sticking to commitments have paved the way for a negotiated settlement on a long festering issue, says N Sathiya Moorthy
I-T lens on current account deposits over Rs 12.5 lakh. All the news and more post demonetisation.
'Amitabh Bachchan told me, "I don't appreciate other people doing my voice".'
The year 2014 has been an eventful one for India. The country got a new government and a new state, broke new frontiers in various fields and of course its share of controversies.
The full transcript of the exclusive interview with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ayurvedic expert Dr G G Gangadharan on how the ancient Indian medical practice needs to be propagated in the country of its origin
In his penultimate State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that the economy is improving.