Minister of state for power Piyush Goyal will gift wooden-framed 'appreciation letters' to one million govt employees.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created a flutter with his first Independence Day speech. While diverted the national attention to social issues, Modi smartly avoided political traps.
Men and women of the Indian Air Force who conducted rescue missions in Kerala's worst deluge speak to Rediff.com's Archana Masih.
Pakistani authorities claimed to have foiled a plot to target Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by busting a terror network planning to launch suicide attack on his residence in Raiwind on the outskirts of Lahore.
The probe into the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian jet is now looking at the possibility that the plane may have landed somewhere as no debris has been found so far, a media report has said.
IAF pilots would no longer have to fly deep into heavily defended airspace to strike enemy bases, they can launch a Brahmos from as far away as 295 km.
After several women were prevented from entering the Sabarimala shrine after the Supreme Court verdict upheld their right to do so, Bindu and Kanakadurga managed the seemingly impossible. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com finds out how they did it.
'Speaking this year from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he excelled himself in content, diction and delivery -- all extemporaneously flowing, replete with felicitous expressions and captivating word play. 'The only other Indian prime minister with whom he stands comparison is Jawaharlal Nehru who too shunned prepared speeches and established instant rapport with his audiences,' says B S Raghavan.
"We are committed to building a new India. We have to do this as early as possible," he said.
'The CAA should be kept in abeyance, without making it a prestige issue.'
'Laying down a clear policy on the future of illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR,' suggests former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
'It was a mission undertaken in darkness in every sense -- literally, because Afghanistan had no electricity at that time; and, metaphorically because Delhi historically dealt only with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and the foreign ministry's vast archives had nothing to offer on the culture and politics of the northern tribes in the Hindu Kush.'
This week, as the I-T department scanned the deposits, reality hit them: Only a minuscule percentage of the Jan Dhan accounts had been used for money laundering.
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.
Days after the Indian Coast Guard intercepted a 'terror boat' from Pakistan, there are still some doubts over the claims.
GST, a much needed reform that widens the tax net, promises to strangle many legitimate businesses while they wait for the tax administration and systems to catch up, says Rahul Jacob.
'The objective is not to make India into a one religion place, but to ensure that there is harmonious and peaceful co-existence of all faiths with each of them having their cultural personality.'
Rangoon haunts in unlikely fashion and, while the director's most straightforward picture, holds enough of its own marvels to justify multiple viewings,' notes Raja Sen.
Cesc Fabregas and Branislav Ivanovic struck late goals to earn improving champions Chelsea a 2-1 victory at Southampton in the Premier League on Saturday.
An invitation by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit to all the Kashmiri separatist leaders "for consultations" in Delhi ahead of Indo-Pak foreign secretary-level talks has touched off a controversy with the Bharatiya Janata Party calling it "most unfortunate" and "old tactics".
'If tempers all over the country are so fragile that they can be lost because a couple of film stars give their child the same name as a 14th-century warlord, exactly what sort of compromises can be palatable,' asks Mihir S Sharma.
At 46, on December 31, 2011, Sangeeta Sindhi Bahl did something extraordinary. She scaled her first peak, Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet), the highest mountain in Africa.
'Any 21st-century political campaign will involve a lot of jockeying for social media territory.' The higher the profile of the campaign, the more likely it is to draw freelancers. Devangshu Datta surveys the Battle of the Bots.
Dr Kalyani Gomathinayagam, a young Indian doctor who volunteered to spend four weeks in west Africa helping those suffering and dying of Ebola, speaks to Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com why she took on an assignment many would shy away from.
'After it was finished, Shah Jahan visited the Taj only twice.' 'There is a letter from Aurangzeb to him after a visit, reporting that the dome was leaking and needed to be fixed.' 'Shah Jahan wasn't bothered: He had moved on to designing his next project, Shahjahanabad,' reveals Aakar Patel.
The film is all about how a weak, good for nothing is suddenly transformed into a boxing champion by the power of true love.
Fourteen photos from events that defined the world in the week gone by.
Ved Prakash who has been working in the field of recyclable raw materials for 29 years aims to 'create value' every day.
He was the army commander who planned Operation Bluestar. As army chief he planned Operation Brasstacks which rattled the Pakistan army. General K Sundarji was brilliant, ambitious and controversial, remembers Rahul Bedi.
Tales By Light is devoted to the kind of nature photography that appears on the pages of Nat Geo, but it exposes viewers to fascinating vistas that have only partly to do with photography, says Vikram Johri.
'While fighter pilots must not be sent into combat in inferior aircraft, an obsessive quest for outright combat superiority will leave an air force short of numbers,' says Ajai Shukla.
Kanika Datta visits the Cu Chi military tunnels -- a testimony to a plucky little country's 30-year war of resistance against, first, French colonisers and, then, the US.
Rajeev Srinivasan on the disastrous after-effects of a made-up spying incident
'Let me talk about young Indian startups with their hearts in the right place and how they are proving that innovations that represent 'affordable excellence' -- breaking the myth that 'affordability' and 'excellence' cannot go together -- is indeed possible!' says Dr R A Mashelkar, the eminent scientist, in this fascinating feature.
Four top lawyers secretly worked on resolving sensitive legal issues including sending forces on Pakistani soil without its consent.
'There is no difference morally between politicians scoring points amid the rubble and non-politicians who assume that politics and corruption necessarily had something to do with it,' says Mihir S Sharma. 'Both are twisting a tragedy to their own ends.'
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The government wants to generate 100,000 Mw of solar power by 2022.
'This can lift us out of confusion, misery, melancholy and failure, and indeed guide us when it is contacted.' 'For us to ignite our spirituality, we need to look inward and transcend our egos. We need to recognize, connect with and integrate the eternal spirit within,' says A P J Abdul Kalam in his latest book, Transcendence.
Hopes of NRIs to cast votes in the ongoing general elections through Internet were dashed on Friday with the Supreme Court saying that any interim relief at this stage may open a pandora's box.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
The 1971 war reaffirmed the importance of inspirational senior leadership in battle and heralded the emergence of a new fighting class amongst officers and men of India's armed forces.
