Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to a joint meeting of the United States Congress will be an opportunity to energise efforts to improve bilateral ties, top American lawmakers from across the political divide have said.
'We first need to acknowledge the truth.' 'We are trying to diminish the problem and say, everything is okay and green shoots are emerging.' 'Imagine you are a doctor and not getting accurate medical reports, how do you diagnose and treat the illness?' 'We are not dealing with a terminal illness here, we are dealing with BP and cholesterol, which are imminently curable.'
'His contributions in setting up transparent precedents of governance are still basically intact despite the cynicism of several of his successors,' notes Jamini Bhagwati.
'When it vanishes as a national force (meaning when it can no longer get sufficient votes to hold onto its symbol, the hand) it will not have been the first large Indian party to die,' says Aakar Patel.
'The EC is a sacred institution.' 'In the last few years, more than once, we have found the EC bending over backwards to accommodate the government.'
'According national security and higher defence management empathetic political attention they warrant is critical. Will Prime Minister Modi pick up this gauntlet?' asks C Uday Bhaskar.
From Sri Lanka's most popular political family to its most despised -- going by the voices on the streets calling for the Rajapaksas' ouster -- what went wrong for the clan? Veteran Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy offers an insight.
The success of the government will depend substantially on the quality of its team of key ministers, officials and advisors
'Savarkar was the closest the RSS had to a freedom movement icon, however flawed.' 'Indira Gandhi wasn't going to gift him to them.' 'And a non-career politician like Dr Singh understands it.' 'It is just that his party never listened to him,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The hospital that draws patients from all over India giving them hope by saving limbs and wants you to know that skin donation gives life to burn victims.
Policy discussions now should urgently focus on the road map for serious economic and institutional reforms to put India on a sustained high growth trajectory like the Chinese economy, says Jayanta Roy.
'By holding forth on Swadeshi economics, Bhagwat is showing his intent to fight back,' says Shekhar Gupta.
An article published by the party's Mumbai unit has caused a stir as it blames Jawaharlal Nehru for the state of affairs in Kashmir, China and Tibet.
The frenzy to be present at the Madison Square Garden on September 28 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Indian-American community likely rivals a rock concert held at the famous New York venue.
'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Shastri took the first big step to transform India's agriculture, the benefits of which his successors reaped in plenty, says A K Bhattacharya.
Businessmen love low import duties on their inputs and high duties on their outputs. And the Bharatiya Janata Party has a keen ear for business sentiment.
Armed forces and the police can only ensure that violence is kept under control but for any kind of lasting peace, politicians will have to find an answer to the perception that the Indian State is anti-Islam. Therein lies the biggest challenge to the Modi government, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retired).
A weak presence in the Rajya Sabha has forced the NDA to try and rope in 'weak links' in the Opposition ranks to pass key legislation in the Upper House.
'Modi didn't face such belligerence in his home state. Moreover, as the prime minister, he can no longer resort to his earlier ploy of describing every attack on himself as an attack on Gujarat. Instead, he has to rebut the charges with calm logic,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Together, they controlled nearly Rs 26 lakh crore of assets at the end of FY16.
Ambassador Natarajan Krishnan and Ambassador Shankar Bajpai helped shape Indian foreign policy at a glorious, but difficult, time in history, recalls Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'An opportunity is at hand to think big and recast the India-China relationship on a new template, which would help the pursuit of our country's dream of major power status,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Fali Nariman, one of India's best-known lawyers, tells Aditi Phadnis that plurality of political opinion is the only way to counter intolerance
Mayawati was outmanoeuvred by the BJP in the race for the Rajya Sabha in Uttar Pradesh just days after she helped the Samajwadi Party snatch two Lok Sbaha seats from the saffron party in bypolls.
'It seems to me that bringing Rahul in now would be like throwing petrol on the flames consuming Congress,' says Aakar Patel.
Controlled communal tension is useful in ensuring continued Muslim support. Fear of the BJP is a requirement for both, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, to keep their Muslim vote bank in line, says Saeed Naqvi.
If an elected government had been sworn in, Jung's tenure and the government would have been more or less co-terminus and Jung would have been just the ceremonial head of Delhi. Now, he will run Delhi, pending another round of assembly elections, says Aditi Phadnis
'I had expected them to fight this election on the issue of development, but they are not doing that.' 'Now they have decided to belittle Gujarat's development.'
Thanks to Sharad Pawar and him alone, Maharashtra has shown that the Modi-Shah duo can be halted. The next step is to take the battle to Dilli, says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
If Nitish Kumar did not make his choice now, he could not re-enter the NDA later on and hope to be counted in as a prime ministerial possibility whenever the chance arises, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The debate, by being mostly in Hindi, lost much of its educative relevance to the southern states.' 'All the prime minister's debating skills and oratorical prowess went over the heads of the South Indian audience,' points out B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'The next prime minister will be from an Opposition party and not from the BJP.' 'The BJP may be the single largest party, but not with a majority and there will be a fractured verdict.' Anti-Modi and non-BJP parties will be in a majority.'
Report card of the Narendra Modi-led central government for the first six months, on the basis of ratings by top CEOs, under key parameters.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's hot saffronite swami is yoga teacher Ramdev.
'Modi's visit is path breaking in the sense that India has come out of the closet and is prepared to deal with Israel openly and in a host of fields, military as well as civilian,' says P R Kumaraswamy, one of India's leading experts on the Middle-East, currently in Israel.
From being the hand-picked choice of Sonia Gandhi as Andhra Pradesh chief minister to sitting on a dharna in Delhi against division of the state, Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy has turned from a Congress regional leader to a disgruntled rebel in his nearly 39-month tumultuous tenure.
