'Washington appears to be playing the long game, and making the argument to India that over the longer term, Russia -- sanctioned, cash-strapped, isolated by the West -- will no longer be a viable defence partner for India'
Ponmariappan, who has been running a free library at his hair-cutting salon in Tamil Nadu, was featured on Mann Ki Baat on October 25.
The Modi government is notoriously honest about one fact: It does not listen to economists, observes Shekhar Gupta.
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 prime minister should not have involved himself in these negotiations.' 'If he had not got himself involved and allowed only his ministers to talk to the farmers, things would have not reached this stage.'
'Since the rise of the Modi-Shah paradigm, the BJP has followed a simple formula.' 'Sweep the Hindi heartland and the two big Western states, and you can rule India with a majority by just adding some little bits on the platter from here and there,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
Once the tanks roll back, a zero-based assessment of future equations with China is necessary. Given the conflict situations that China is imposing on India time and again, the red, amber and green lines of interactions with China need to be laid down and communicated in no uncertain terms, asserts Srikanth Kondapalli, the leading China expert.
Jayalalithaa was the third chief minister in Tamil Nadu to die in office, after her mentor M G Ramachandran (1987) and before that his mentor C N Annadurai (1969). The state government should have evolved protocols for the medical care of the incumbent, and institutional memory should have guided the government and officials in the matter, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Rahul Gandhi's recent video performances offer little hope - the first fell flat in attacking government 'strategy'; the second showed him in a position unbecoming of a leader,' argues T N Ninan.
'In the end, it was possibly Pawar's pow-wow with Modi that helped her to come to a decision,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'Our fight is against his political masters, the BJP and Devendra Fadnavis.'
The Modi government has been put on notice.'Will it buckle under such pressure? These are times when the moral fibre of the leadership makes all the difference, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
