'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
'The beef fest is about an individual's freedom to wear what he wants and eat what he wants. The students were protesting against the state interfering with their personal liberties.' 'Everybody has the right to air his or her opinion and lead a life they want. Nobody has any right to put restrictions on others. What we need is tolerance but what we see is intolerance.' Deepa Nisanth, a lecturer who backed Kerala's beef fest, on why she supported the students in their protest.
'...a dazzling flash, and then, fizzle,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
President Pranab Mukherjee, PM Narendra Modi, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Left parties, among others, condoled the demise of former Cuban president.
We sorted through countless photographs taken around the world to come up with the top photos of 2019. Together these images tell the story of the year -- capturing moments of hope and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Dubbing the next election a choice between governance and development on one side and chaos on the other, the prime minister cited the example of Karnataka, where the Congress-Janata Dal(Secular) alliance 'stole the mandate' to form government with 'development taking a back seat'.
Though it is a little too neat and a little too light, Rubaru Roshni is important because it is telling us stories of people who have experienced an 'Inner Migration' in their lives, notes Sreehari Nair.
A group of students carrying placards and raising slogans protested in the tense University campus on Wednesday morning.
Attacking the note ban move, Yechury said the PM's assertion that it will impact terror funding has not yielded any result.
The governments at the Centre and in the state were unprepared to handle the massive response to the large numbers of people, as they were not aware of the groundswell of public admonition that was against the Establishment, says N Sathiyamoorthy.
'If they were really serious (about conferring the Bharat Ratna on Savarkar) what were they doing for the last five years?' 'Why do they have to take so long?' 'Gandhi himself never got the Bharat Ratna so it does not really matter.'
'You are sending the army to Rohtak? There are six paramilitary forces in the country. Why can't you use these people?' 'What is the need to call out the army? And that too at a place where there is an army man in every house.' 'Can you imagine how stupid this decision is? How insensitive?'
The jallikattu issue has revived pan-Tamil political sentiments especially among youths, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Sonia is trying to become a politician again. Will she succeed?'
A group of young women and men have had enough of moral policing in Kerala. On Sunday, November 2 they plan to meet at Kochi's Marine Drive and stage a somewhat unique protest that involves... kissing.
What is Narendra Modi like? What is his politics about? What will he do? What are his priorities? Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com speaks to Swapan Dasgupta to find out more about the man of the moment.
'There was an overt campaign and there was a covert campaign. The overt campaign may be development, government, and all this nonsense. But the covert campaign, which Mr Amit Shah was doing, was far more important with the help of RSS cadres. This has been an RSS election. From day one I have been saying, this is not Congress versus the BJP, this is Congress versus the RSS,' says Jairam Ramesh, one of the key strategists of the Congress party.
L K Advani's observation on Narendra Modi, an attempt to cut the BJP's prime ministerial nominee down to size, billing him a mere event manager like Vijay Raaz in Mira Nair's film Monsoon Wedding, speaks volumes about their differences... In the coming days, the Congress and BJP may lock horns over the AgustaWestland chopper deal. In an Italian court, Guido Haschke, one of the accused middlemen who allegedly bribed the Indian side, has sought a plea bargain to reduce his jail term if convicted. On or around April 11, we will know how much Haschke is ready to reveal. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt detects which way the political wind is blowing these days.
After the Bihar setback, these are the issues the PM must address to maintain the people's faith in him.
There are many firsts in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha speech which constitute the cardinal elements of a strategy which has all the potential to serve as the mainspring of the polity for the rest of the century, says B S Raghavan.
BJP President Amit Shah -- arguably the second most powerful politician in the nation -- granted a rare television interview to the Network 18 group of news channels. Rediff.com's Rajesh Alva checks out what the BJP boss said in this word cloud assessment of the interview.
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
Let national interest alone be Narendra Modi's guiding principle, says Virendra Kapoor. No personal agendas, no divisive ideas and ideologies, no crony capitalist interests.
Rajeev Srinivasan tells how he came very close to being another number in the 'disappeareds' during the Emergency.
'Modi, focused on youth and their aspirations, has articulated a truly disruptive change: One of hope, of duties rather than rights, of standing up to the world instead of being bullied by it,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
The third and final part of BJP president Amit Shah's interview to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
'After the 2002 riots when the media and other political parties started blaming Modiji, thousands of people like us -- now, it must be crores of us -- started becoming staunch supporters of Modiji. The more you blamed him the more of our support he gained.' Pramod Singh of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh is one of Narendra Modi's biggest fans and a member of Modi's India272 Web initiative, spreading the leader's message on social media and the Internet.