Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had brought in the United States style 'primaries' with much fanfare to empower grassroot leaders to fight the Lok Sabha elections.
Even as Sonia Gandhi was on Saturday re-elected chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party and asked party men not to bicker in public amid a fierce blame game in the party, the anger and anguish was visible after the meet was over. Anita katyal reports
Nitin Gokhale, national security expert and founder BharatShakti.in, tells us what the controversy is all about.
Prakash Javadekar's one year as India's minister of state (independent charge) of environment, forests and climate change has been an unmitigated disaster, says activist Himanshu Thakkar.
Seeing the potential of shale gas, Reliance Industries moved early to secure a foothold in the Marcellus shale reserves in the US.
Government's reforms are too half-hearted. But Rahul Gandhi's Congress is too amateurish and inept to hold it to account.
Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt, who is accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his trips to Russia and China, notes that Moscow and New Delhi work together professionally and via a shared common approach on crucial issues.
The AAP deliberately flouted procedures when it attempted to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi assembly on Friday, knowing that it would fall by the wayside. But Kejriwal was not perturbed as he was looking for an opportunity to opt out and the anti-graft bill was the perfect reason for doing so as it would enable him to go out in a blaze of glory and accuse the Congress and the BJP of not being serious about fighting corruption, analyses Anita Katyal.
'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.'
The Cabinet on Thursday decided to allow Reliance Industries to almost double the price of natural gas from April provided the firm gave a bank guarantee to cover its liability if gas-hoarding charges are proved.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
'It is good for the country, but it is not good for a politician... What we call impatience is actually desperation to needing something NOW.' 'Our politics is restricted by one factor; that our Parliament is full of villages. 40% of the country now lives in cities but only 25% of Parliament is coming from the cities.'
A very delayed and subdued reaction, at a time when the non-aligned world had expected a big country like India to come out in support of rights and justice. It was yet another example of the mealy mouthed approach that has come to define Indian foreign policy, says Seema Mustafa.
The commission asks for notification to be deferred; RIL's KG-D6 pricing issue may return to Cabinet
Dhirendra Mulkalwar, one of the protestors who raised a protest banner at Essar's Mumbai headquarters, on why he joined Greenpeace's Junglistan group that is working to save India's forests.
'A senior US diplomat last week asked me when things will go back to normal. I had to tell her that if normalcy meant getting back these perks, it is not going to happen for a very long time, if ever at all,' says Mohan Guruswamy. 'For the Indian public now is outraged that US diplomats have enjoyed all these winking at the rulebook.'
Eleven things we learnt about Rahul Gandhi's style of functioning from former Union minister Jayanthi Natarajan's November 214 letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Congress gets into the opposition groove but still has miles to go, says Saroj Nagi.