With the general election campaign less than six months away, the BJP has more to think about than it had on the eve of 2019. It's the states that will be robbing BJP strategists of their sleep at this point, not the Lok Sabha, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'Whatever the result on December 18, Rahul has succeeded.' 'He has taken the battle to the rival's territory, and forced him to take him more seriously than he has done so far, or would have wished to.' 'A party, dominating and powerful as the BJP today, is spending all its time attacking the leader of one with just 46 seats in the Lok Sabha, and in the woods in Gujarat for 22 years.' 'This isn't the script the BJP had written,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Every seat the Congress gets above 100 will keep pushing the Modi-Shah BJP lower in the dangerous sub-200 zone,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
With political parties using him as punching bag in the highly charged election campaign, Adani Group head Gautam Adani on Sunday said he got no special favours from Narendra Modi and his group has since 1993 acquired only barren waste land for infrastructure projects.
This is not an election Budget in the sense that I might target the voter in the coming elections. But if you look beyond this round of state elections, and tilt the periscope to graze at the more distant horizon, see how the Narendra Modi government wishes things looking by the summer of 2024, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry was on Sunday killed in a road accident after his car hit a divider in Maharashtra's Palghar district neighbouring Mumbai, a police official said.
The bitter war between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party over the Rafale deal on Tuesday saw more name-calling with the opposition party dubbing Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as a "babble blogger" and dismissing his "clown prince out-clowning himself" barb at Rahul Gandhi as "hollow rants of a court jester".
According to sources at AIIMS, the BJP leader was admitted following complaints of chest congestion and breathing issues.
'To all those then who talk about ending Brahminical hegemony, my advice is: Get the Brahmins on your side,' says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Say hello to the cast of The Accidental Prime Minister.
'Is Rahul turning the Congress' covert soft-Hindutva support into overt support now?' 'And if so, following in the BJP's footsteps, is the Congress going to abandon Indian Muslims and Muslim causes altogether?' asks Dr Najid Hussain whose father-in-law former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the Gujarat riots.
'It will be our attempt that in order to get the country out of the condition it is in because of their (the BJP) coming to power, the Congress will go to them (leaders of parties opposed to the BJP) and if there is need for support we shall do so too.'
The title alludes to Socrates willingly drinking poisonous hemlock as his punishment after he was convicted of corrupting the minds of the young and impiety in ancient Athens.
Spokesperson for the Jammu and Kashmir administration Rohit Kansal said there is no question of lying in the apex court and reiterated the stand that Soz is a free man.
'The present-day Congress party does not lack leaders who want a Rahul-led Congress to taste electoral success, but wish he fails in his efforts to cleanse the party.'
Launching a scathing attack on Narendra Modi for his oft repeated 'recounting minister' jibe, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday called the Gujarat CM an 'encounter minister'.
'We don't know where he will go from here and how he will conduct his government.'
Many important RSS people believe the 2014 result was the consequence of Hindutva and not just Modi's outstanding oratory, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Blocking Parliament brings attention to a party that has poor speakers like Rahul Gandhi. It is unlikely to shine in debates, assuming we were a nation that enjoyed listening to sparkling intellectual exchange, which we are not.'
The prime minister took the first-ever flight by such a craft in the country on the last day of campaigning for the Gujarat polls.
India would not be seen to be anything but rude with the Pakistanis. In the big picture, who is the bigger adversary right now? Who is the bigger pain in the neck? And who is it that is keeping more than 3,000 km of our borders active, throwing our military posture and deployments into imbalance? asks Shekhar Gupta.
Congress said it expects the truth to prevail after the report on the Rafale deal is made public.
'If Modi wants to help the poor and get the credit for it as well, he must do what China does. He must openly adopt pro-capital policies.'
'It is an important and significant election -- but there is nothing make-or-break about it. A victory is always great, but if the BJP wins, it can't make Mr Modi any stronger in his party and government than he already is,' says Shekhar Gupta.
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.
Tokyo-bound AFI medical commission chairman AK Mendiratta dies of COVID-19.
'...because we are truer to the spirit of the Hindu faith.' 'There is absolutely no question that the Hinduism of the mob lynchers, the people who have killed others because of what they are eating or how they are worshipping or the faith they belong to or what they're doing professionally, those are, to my mind, not Hindus at all.'
Modi also dared Rahul to speak in any language for 15 minutes about the achievements of the Siddaramaiah government without referring to a piece of paper.
'If the school of bluffers includes those who get to the top not from deep knowledge but from delivering 'a clever quip or a leftfield surprise argument', then Modi is the undisputed Bluffocrat Emeritus,' says Sunil Sethi.
Amit Shah now enters an unfamiliar and interesting phase of his political career. His success or failure will henceforth be assessed based on his performance as a key minister, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'If Khan Market today -- a neon-drenched spectacle of blingy shops and pricey eateries -- is what it is, it's not due to the dramatic shift in political dispensations, but because free-market India is another country,' notes Sunil Sethi.
'He always avoided eating non-vegetarian food in presence of his deputies if they were fasting for the month of Shravan.' 'There were no Hindu, Jain, Parsi and Swaminarayan festivals he would forget.' 'He was a conservative Muslim and therefore could get along well with conservative Hindus.'
It is in no way a government of the economic Right. The Right is limited to religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other party, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Narendra Modi, says T V R Shenoy, is 'busy trying to woo back two constituencies that were crucial when the BJP won power in the elections of 1998 and of 1999, namely UP (and the Hindi belt in general) and educated youth.'
'This term -- "Nehru-Gandhi" family -- is a misnomer. Nehru was not a dynast; he did not even name his successor... The big mistake she made was to push forward Rahul Gandhi who is a dead loss as a leader,' says Nayantara Sahgal, whom Sonia Gandhi calls 'Tara Masi.'
It may well be possible to defeat Modi. But nobody seems to know how, points out Vir Sanghvi.
'These are lies that Priyanka Gandhi rung up Sachin Pilot.'
The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the management of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), that markets its products under the Amul brand, to "maintain status quo" on the issue of removal of Vipul Chaudhary as its chairman.
'India has jackboot laws legislated by all parties, a State prepared to stomp all over you, and citizens who don't often realise how easily they can be crushed under both,' says T N Ninan.
