What is Narendra Modi like? What is his politics about? What will he do? What are his priorities? Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com speaks to Swapan Dasgupta to find out more about the man of the moment.
Indrani chose at that moment to wave a folded chit from the accused enclosure. It distracted Bharti, who looked at her sharply for a split second before turning back to Pasbola. The chit was collected from Indrani and her lawyer Gunjan Mangla slipped it to Pasbola. He looked at it, quietly laughed in disbelief and continued with his cross examination.
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.
The BJP said it is legal with adequate safeguards and in the interest of national security..
'That's the beauty of Naveen.' 'His intermittent support to the NDA and Modi confuses BJP workers in Odisha.' 'It gives an impression that Naveen has a tacit understanding with the NDA and that the BJP will not really challenge him wholeheartedly.'
'Masarat Alam is today one of the the undisputed leaders of Kashmir's Islamists. And all he had to do was to get someone to hold up a flag. He has accurately placed us and we can look forward to many more years of this from him.'
'Will 'Make in India' be able to harness the demographic dividend so it does not become a disaster?' 'Will 'Digital India' live up to the lofty promises the government and private sector made as part of its recent launch?'
'The Congress's allies won't be left behind in looking out for their own interests. Some will demand a bigger share of the ministerial or electoral pie, others will simply jump ship,' says T V R Shenoy.
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
'Politics is about caste in Eastern UP and religion in Western UP.' Rediff.com's Archana Masih gets a sense of the fault lines in this election's most volatile region -- that can make or break the future of political parties in UP.
'For the last 10 years the Congress made the RSS an idea of intolerance, anti-minority, especially anti-Muslim, and an idea of fascism.' 'That has been demolished now by Pranab Mukherjee.'
'My feeling is that these parties will not learn their lesson despite their electoral drubbing. They cannot put forward a leader. They have no record of improving their constituents' lives by providing basic services. All they offer is their "'secularism",' says T V R Shenoy.
That may have reduced clutter, but it would also have reduced choice.
'The new generation voter is hyper-nationalistic, but it isn't essentially illiberal.' 'They will find the rants of Adityanath as laughable as Irfan Habib's. They will also find the BJP's polarising approach to vote-gathering unacceptable if it fails to deliver jobs and growth,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Modi said the wave in favour of the BJP was stronger this time than in 2014.
Amidst barbs flying back and forth, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani lists all that you need to know about the fourth phase of the UP assembly elections, which will take place on February 23.
"They call themselves the champions of speech and expression. But deny the same for the people of Kerala."
'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
It is the last place where the dinosaurs who once dreamt of ruling the Earth can still be seen in their natural habitat, says T V R Shenoy.
'What happened in the Vajpayee era will repeat in the Modi era in 2019.'
'I do films because I want to feel proud of myself as an actor. Why should I sign nonsense? The right roles aren't coming. The only cameo I have done in Hindi is Zoya's Dil Dhadakne Do. She is a friend and I desperately wanted to work with her. She casts big stars, so obviously, I couldn't be the lead.' Rahul Bose on his films, and Poorna.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh interacts with readers on Rediff Chat as he discusses the period that changed India's history, forever.
'There is no secrecy clause to the price (of the aircraft).' 'There can be secrecy on the capability of the nuclear payload of aircraft and things like that, but the price is hardly a secret.'
He said the NDA's work culture was different from that of the previous governments.
Dolly, who is leading from the front in Amritsar, wakes up early, plans things for her husband's campaign, oversees resources, does nukkad meetings and keeps busy -- all without getting into the limelight. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com's fascinating insights into the battle for Amritsar!
Prime Minister Modi described the DMK chief as a prolific thinker and a deep-rooted mass leader who stood for regional aspiration and national progress.
'The dragon is Narendra Modi. While it may be harsh -- a tad -- to say that it was sleeping, it is fair to say that the government's approach in tackling corruption cases was lackadaisical.' 'By choosing corruption as an issue the Opposition has goaded the Treasury benches to return fire -- and the BJP has more potent ammunition,' says T V R Shenoy.
'No, that is not an abbreviation for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha,' says T V R Shenoy, 'but for J Jayalalithaa-Mamata Banerjee-Mayawati-Mulayam Singh Yadav... If the AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress, and other regional forces do extremely well, we could be heading for a repetion of the 9th Lok Sabha (1989 to 1991) and the 11th Lok Sabha (1996 to 1998), each of which saw multiple prime ministers and neither of which lasted even half of its five-year term.'
'Minorities should not fear a Modi sarkar... Who has given the right to kill in the name of religion? No one! You are not James Bond 007, that you will just take a shotgun and kill anybody at your whims and fancies. We are not living in a banana republic...' The inimitable Shatrughan Sinha on Narendra Modi as a dabbang action hero, what a Modi Sarkar would be like.
'The people of India have not only challenged the ruling dispensation with the constitution, they have also opened the eyes of the leadership that sits in the Opposition.'
Under attack over the alleged power projects scam in Arunachal Pradesh, Union minister Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday rejected allegations of wrongdoing and said those who have "planted" the story against him "will be beaten up with shoes".
If this Budget was not packaged and sold as a Budget for the poor and for farmers, Narendra Modi would have lost the next election.
Opposition parties disrupted the proceedings of the Parliament for the fourth consecutive day on Tuesday over the demonetisation issue.
'Politics is not a post for retired people to enjoy.'
'I hope Prime Minister Modi will take the population bull by the horns,' says Sudhir Bisht.
The Supreme Court ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe in the massive admission and recruitment scandal in Madhya Pradesh that will also encompass deaths of people related to it as more skeletons tumbled out of the Vyapam cupboard with yet another witness reported dead.
Crores of first-time voters will vote against the Congress -- and tens of crores of existing voters shall do the same. The challenges the Congress shall face after the general election of 2014 may be the most severe that the party has ever tackled, says T V R Shenoy.
Read what the ex-chief of R&AW, A S Dulat, told our readers on Rediff Chat!
The lesson Waghmare sternly received on Monday from CBI Investigating Officer K K Singh and CBI Prosecutor Bharat Badami about the way a witness must answer questions from the defence seemed to have had only a marginal effect on him. On Tuesday the timid former office boy still chose, unpredictably and remarkably, to answer many a question in the manner of his choosing. He told the room categorically that he had asked Indrani's former secretary Kajal Sharma not to forge Sheena Bora's signature on her resignation letter.
