'It is not with feelings of devotion or piety that these people are gathering.' 'It is mostly with emotions of hatred.' 'Listen to their slogans and their rhetoric and this becomes immediately clear,' says Aakar Patel.
'When we saw Saawariya for the first time, I was aghast.' 'If only Bhansali had told me, I would have dissuaded him.
'Kulbhushan Jadhav is a very sad case.' 'I think Pakistan handled this issue very clumsily.' 'They gave too much of publicity and also said that they will hang him.' 'Now obviously, they are not going to hang him.'
'I sometimes fight with God and tell him, "Bahut ho gaya yaar, I should go now, call me".'
'The nuclear deal required Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to gamble the future of his government on a vision for the future of his nation.'
Economists who get too close to prime ministers eventually come to grief after their boss is defeated
The celebrities offer their condolences.
'For now, the AAP is the conversation,' Lord Meghnad Desai tells Rediff.com's Sanchari Bhattacharya. 'Everyone is talking about the 'Delhi model'. They have made so much difference. They have changed politics.'
Narendra Modi will be the first leader to address a joint session of the United States Congress during US House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan's tenure.
'People say my father was scared of Kishore Kumar. That is untrue. There are so many songs that my father told the composers to let some other singer sing because they too are good.'
United States Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has cancelled his crucial trip to India this month in view of the strained relations between the two countries over the arrest of an Indian diplomat on alleged visa fraud charges.
The pipeline for well-qualified and experienced policy economists at senior levels of government has broken, leading to a growing dearth of suitable candidates for top economist positions.
Aziz Haniffa, who has covered every Indian Prime Minister's visit to the US since Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, gives us a peek into what's happening in Washington, DC on the eve of the Modi-Trump summit.
While Ahmed Patel staved off the challenge to his Rajya Sabha membership, it leaves the scene wide open for the Gujarat assembly election this winter.
'I was present at a meeting where he decided to permit the IAF to strike at Pakistan positions in Kargil, with the caveat that they should not cross the LoC.' 'Confident that the Indian Army would succeed, Mr Vajpayee was positioning himself to tell the world after the Kargil conflict was won that India did not violate the 'sanctity' of the LoC,' recalls Ambassador G Parthasarathy, who served as India's envoy in Islamabad in that eventful year, 1999.
'By demonetising higher denominations of currency notes, we have taken out the vehicle for corruption.' 'But the motive is still there.'
The age-old Indian practice has brought people from different cultures and countries together.
'Motionless .. still .. eyes shut in perpetuity .. a form on wooden logs .. covered .. flames about .. and a life turned to ashes,' writes Big B.
The party's most important electoral challenge lies in whether it can meet the aspirations of the youth who were drawn by the promise of gainful work.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month will be undertaking one of the longest ever abroad visits by an Indian head of government in recent times. He is scheduled to be on a nine-day, three-nation visit to Myanmar, Australia and Fiji from November 11 to 19. Later in the month, he will be in Nepal to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit on November 26-27.
'I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.' The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP,' says Sudhir Bisht.
Rafisaab's memory is as alive as ever in his devoted fans' minds.
'Even in this age of self-willed and authoritarian leaders and spontaneous gestures, a script is still written,' notes Ambassador B S Prakash, imagining the 'talking points' are for the India-US summit on June 26.
The United States has agreed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the arrest of an Indian diplomat has caused hiccups in bilateral ties, but said it is now focused on getting the relationship back on really strong footing.
India has sought access to Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley, the Mumbai terror attack convict now lodged in a US prison, as it insisted on bringing to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 assault.
Like Nehru, Modi is loathe to touch the public sector. His policy towards Israel leans towards 'non-alignment'. You can find other similarities: frequent public speeches, personalised leadership, total control over foreign and strategic policies, even stylised dressing, says Shekhar Gupta.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal believes the India-US nuclear deal is not in limbo and it is for India and Pakistan to set the pace for conversations to resolve their issues. Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC.
Engineering conglomerate fended off three corporate raids but emerged stronger.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being accused of wrong things. His main problem is his view of himself, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan
'If we could break through this symbolic barrier of sanctions and a dysfunctional relationship, we could do anything.'
'I have never seen anybody disliked more as prime minister than Modi.' 'What is interesting is in his prime ministership, no matter whatever happens in any corner of India, Modi is blamed for it.' 'Modi has not suspended any Constitutional liberties. No Opposition leader has been put in jail... Modi is not Hitler.'
'The scenario today, whether in 'Everybody is concerned only with 100 crore films... If our starting point is going to be "How much money will it make? Will it go into the 100 crore club?" then I am not interested.'
Ananth Mahadevan takes on the audience.
India has made a remarkable journey from a top-down system of economic decision-making to one that unleashed our entrepreneurial spirits but the next big jump lies in enhancing the quality of our tale.
The Planning Commission has not been central to the policy making process since the mid-1960s, says Nitin Desai.
With GDP down by 2 per cent, while 99 per cent of banned notes make way back to the banking system, whom did demonetisation benefit?
'There appears to be in the Indian polity a link between being Single and being of prime ministerial timber. It is a trend, a preponderance -- not a statistical verity,' says Dr Shashi K Pande.
Arvind Kejriwal's party will need around 50 seats to make a pitch for the Left's space in national politics. For that, it will have to contest more than one third of the Lok Sabha seats, points out Saroj Nagi.
Biden said, "One of the reasons why President Obama called our relations with India, quote, "a defining partnership of the century ahead" is that India is increasingly looking east as a force for security and growth in Southeast Asia and beyond."
As two recently declassified Intelligence Bureau reveal that the Jawaharlal Nehru government had spied on the family of Subhas Chandra Bose for nearly two decades, one of India's political mysteries takes centrestage. Rediff.com reproduces this 2006 report in which Sumit Bhattacharya reported that a website claims that Netaji, in fact, did not die in an air crash, as was being believed, and that Netaji had escaped to Russia.
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