Former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on Friday conferred with the Bharat Ratna.
'While economic ties are making incremental progress, it is in the security and strategic domains that the India-Japan synergy is more compelling,' says Dr Rajaram Panda.
'Young IFS officers today would take it for granted that they represent a major country with strengths and capabilities.' 'They will be aware that India is seen as one of the 10 significant countries in the world and therefore their voice will be heard whether on climate change or regime change,' says Ambassador B S Prakash.
Economist S Janakarajan, in an interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com warns that without proper infrastructure, India will never be able to build a market economy.
Six serials blasts rocked the venue of Narendra Modi's rally in Patna minutes before he arrived there to address the gathering while another crude bomb exploded at the railway station, leaving five dead and over a fifty injured.
While the Chhattisgarh police charged the well-known academic with a tribal man's murder, those who know her say it is vendetta at play.
Business reacted with caution to the reforms of 1991, and demanded protection from multinationals and imports. Twenty-five years later, traces of that demand can still be found, reports Bhupesh Bhandari.
Days before Narendra Modi arrives in the US to speak at the UN, meet Barack Obama, gupshup with the likes of Nadella, Pichai, Zuckerberg, and address desis in Silicon Valley, his ministers will help set the commercial and strategic tone for the prime minister's visit.
Life inside the prime minister's official residence is highly regulated, but it comes with its perks, says Veenu Sandhu
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
As the context of Panchsheel has changed, it is all the more essential that India and China need to reinvent and redefine Panchsheel for a new world order taking into account globalisation, and mutual economic interdependence. The new Panchsheel, in order to be relevant, needs to shed its binary approach of west verses the east recognising the seamlessness of global frontiers, which globalisation has brought in, says Rup Narayan Das.
'Good politics is not just staying in power. You cannot sacrifice everything at the altar of trying to ensure the coalition remains in power.'
On the occasion of her breaking the world's longest hunger strike, Rediff.com reproduces this 2011 feature on the activist and her life.
Recent investigations into the telecom spectrum and coal scams have made bureaucrats very wary of taking decisions.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
'If you say I won't talk to them at all, does terrorism stop?' 'Even if they say they will give up terrorism, "I will fight terrorism along with you," but even then you say I still won't talk to you until you do the following things, then that is a political call.'
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.
'This is not a Sanjay Baru or Natwar Singh type of book. It's not a memoir. It's not a book to reveal conversations, real or imaginary. This is not a book to position myself at the centre of the world.' Jairam Ramesh on his stint as environment minister.
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid speaks about the importance of the fourth edition of the India-US Strategic Dialogue, which he co-chaired with United States Secretary of State John Kerry in New Delhi
'Both nations have a common problem: A rampaging, jingoistic and hostile China which is making substantial territorial claims. In the long run, Japan and India are going to be the victims of Chinese aggression -- so they might as well hang together to contain China,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
A Texas company will submit a report by June on whether a company controlled by RIL 'stole' natural gas from the wells where ONGC is contracted to operate in the KG basin, as alleged by ONGC.
'... A youth movement which could really transform our politics in a way that the existing elites don't understand.' 'The more you suppress free expression, the more people will value it.' 'The State can't suppress a young society like India where there are so many interesting new ideas emerging,' says Sunil Khilnani, whose latest book Incarnations looks at Indian history through 50 lives.
'Biometric Aadhaar-based surveillance is not only about violation of privacy, but also about the treasure hunt for unprecedented financial surveillance and economic intelligence in the economic history of mankind,' asks Gopal Krishna.
