'You have a chance to use this massive mandate to push through life changing reforms, transform India into a superpower because our nation's biggest strength are its people, and we the people are the most hardworking industrious and entrepreneurial the world has ever seen.' 'Arm us with a society which lives without fear, a governance where business can be conducted smoothly without greasing palms, instill in this great nation a sense of pride once again. Let this nation be bigger than you and the party.' Suparn Verma's impassioned appeal to Narendra Modi.
'Every Indian knows why the BJP is targeting Hamid Ansari.'
'The idea of subversive activities is so vague that it could include making fun of the government, being critical of the government.'
Prime Minister Modi made a strategic blunder of Nehruvian proportions -- presuming no war can happen now, and the Chinese won't be a military threat and risk their economic interests, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'His record will be clouded by the same negative factors as of Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, namely, their politics and therefore social policies,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Nothing 'accidental' about this movie, feels Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'Given his stint in Beijing, as India's longest serving ambassador there and that too through some challenging and interesting times, Jaishankar ought to have been appointed as foreign secretary in 2013 itself,' says Sanjaya Baru.
'He has a gift none of his eight predecessors, from Manmohan Singh to Rajiv Gandhi, had: Being able to speak directly and convincingly to a large enough section of Indians who will take his word for gospel,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Congress leaders on Tuesday threw a protective shield around party Vice President Rahul Gandhi against the predicted rout in the elections and went on to say that he will remain their leader for the future.
The BJP may be ready and waiting to pounce on another key state of the Hindi heartland, but it is the Congress's holy trinity that issued them an invitation to the beheading, notes Sunil Sethi.
'Why choose people from outside the state?'
The Congress distanced itself from the 'so what' remarks of Pitroda about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and asked the leaders of the party to be careful and sensitive in future
India's most powerful prime minister in five decades gets publicly admonished -- if gently -- by the US vice-president. The question is, would this make him reflect on how and why, or which ones of his government and party's missteps exposed his flank like this? asks Shekhar Gupta.
The judgment in the 2G case is a huge, huge, indictment of the criminal investigation and justice system, says R Jagannathan.
'We aren't so unreasonable as to demand that he should have fully reversed Indira Gandhi's worst economic legacy, bank nationalisation.' 'But he could have made a beginning by selling off the two most stressed small public sector banks, and then announced that each year for the next 10, one government bank with the most messed-up balance sheet will be sold.' 'It would have electrified the markets, shocked his other banks into better behaviour, and marked his name among the great reformers,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
'The border stand-off and the uncertainties that come with it should be a wake-up call on what makes for real rather than illusory power,' observes T N Ninan.
Gandhi on Friday chaired his first CWC meeting after being elected as the party chief.
'A close relationship between India Inc and the government cannot help the BJP win elections.' 'While Opposition parties may feel good about Mr Bajaj criticising the Modi regime, the BJP should be seeing the indictment as a political boon,' says A K Bhattacharya.
Though Indians were no strangers to scams, spectrum loss was beyond their wildest imagination.
'In macroeconomic policy, timing is all, and by leaving things too late, Mr Modi may have made around 50 seats in the Lok Sabha highly vulnerable,' says T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
A day after the Prime Minister's Office sought to counter the perception that Manmohan Singh has been "weak" in his tenure, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday took potshots at him.
'...Take him in the sense that I will defeat him. This is just our military term... If there's anybody today who's anti this government, it is the youth of Punjab. All of them are being coerced, there are no jobs being created, all of them are taking to drugs because of frustration... There is no Narendra Modi factor, there is no national anti-incumbency. In Punjab there in only anti-Akali incumbency.' Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, once the Maharaja of Patiala, pulls no punches when taking about his rivals, especially his BJP opponent from Amritsar Arun Jaitley and the Badals, in this no-holds-barred interview with Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Budget speeches have been replete with incomprehensible and even hilarious statements, says Rathin Roy.
'From his persistent fuelling of pan-Hindu nationalism to pandering to narrow Gujarati chauvinism, Rambo rides again, using fair means and foul -- and often foul -- to gain the battleground,' says Sunil Sethi.
'Whether she will remain CPP chairperson or not, that she will decide.'
'If the Congress gets to form the government in 2024, then Sonia Gandhi by virtue of being CPP chairperson will have the authority to decide who will be the prime minister and not Kharge.'
When he speaks of them, it is either in denial or to highlight successes that are only part of a larger story that is worrisome in its totality, observes T N Ninan.
'This man changed the mindset of a generation.'
A delegation of the Progressive Party of Maldives led by its presidential candidate, Abdulla Yamin Abdul Gayoom called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday.
'What is unusual about the current period of slow growth is that it has come without an external driver -- high oil prices and/or successive monsoon failures -- as was the case with all previous periods of slowdown, going back 50 years, notes T N Ninan.
While seven of the suspended MPs belonged to the TMC, six were from the DMK, three from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, two from the Communist Party of India-Marxist and one from the Communist Party of India.
'Brand Kejriwal-AAP have a long way to go even if they win another Delhi election...'
'It is a force nobody can ignore, not even Mr Modi, because it will keep punching above its weight,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Why does Mr Modi only attack Nehru from the Dynasty?' 'At one level, it is pure politics,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
We have a government with an extremely weak economic team advising a PM who hardly pays attention to their thoughts, says Jayanta Roy.
The battle on creating jobs is virtually lost. If the battle for achieving higher growth too is lost, then its political consequences could become difficult to manage, says A K Bhattacharya.
'India Inc has been afraid to criticise the government of the day for many years now, and it is perhaps unfair to blame the current one alone,' says Shyamal Majumdar.
Few people know Ratan Tata as well as R K Krishna Kumar does. Widely perceived to be among the managers closest to Tata, Krishna Kumar assesses Ratan Tata, the man and business leader, in this exclusive interview to Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
'After Vajpayee-Advani, Modi-Shah is the second best in India.'
'You can see the essential contours of his new Pakistan strategy. Rather than keep engaging with or humouring them, he'd rather work on taking their four biggest supporters -- the US, China, the UAE and later Saudi Arabia -- away from them.' 'In his calculation,' says Shekhar Gupta, 'with the total support of all four of these, Pakistan will be forced to moderate its policies.'
