The hapless voters fervently hope that they get to make a more equal choice in the next election and political discourse in the country becomes positive and more enlightened. One wonders if the masses would become more politically aware to discern good intent and performance from gimmickry, notes Biswajit Dasgupta.
Ron Somers, founder and CEO of India First Group and the former President of leading business advocacy group US-India Business Council said that when Lok Sabha election results are declared on June 4, "I believe that Narendra Modi will win Parliament by the largest majority ever recorded in the country's history.
The defence minister also took an indirect dig at Gandhi for "doubting" the government's intention in the handling of the border row with China and said politics can not be done on the basis of "falsehood".
The first IIT campus outside India will come up in Tanzania's Zanzibar and it is expected to launch academic programmes in October, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said on Thursday.
The clashes broke out this morning when protesters attending a non-cooperation programme to demand the government's resignation faced opposition from the supporters of the Awami League, Chhatra League, and Jubo League activists.
Bangladesh is in turmoil, which is not good news for India, which shares a porous 4000 km border with it. There is a danger of fundamentalism growing there, and India has to move in to reset its ties with the new dispensation before China and Pakistan make capital out of it, alerts Ramesh Menon.
Six decades and more later, we are now captives of our identities. Every poll is based on elaborate calculations of electability of candidates on the basis of their castes and other narrow definers. That, along with voter promiscuity, is what defines our political culture, which remains stubbornly resistant to any change, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
'Like Nehru, too, Modi has found dealing with Beijing more and more difficult and has adopted an increasingly assertive approach towards managing India's northern neighbour.'
He also asserted that no one can take the place of Kejriwal in the AAP.
On the ground, rural medical infrastructure and more crucially, women's access to reproductive health services is practically non-existent in Uttar Pradesh, reports Geetanjali Krishna.
The National Institute of Technology-Calicut (NITC) has issued a communication to the students informing them about banning public display of affection inside its campus, saying that it can affect others in a number of ways.
Kumar had recently dumped the 'Mahagathbandhan', of which the Rashtriya Janata Dal was a key constituent, and returned to the NDA fold to form the government with support of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that the decision that Kejriwal should continue to be the chief minister even after being jailed was that of the people of Delhi.
'We have to provide opportunities for those students who are willing to move for studies and later on for employment, and CUET is one such opportunity.'
Capitalism, grounded in the twin pillars of a free market and entrepreneurship, is the singular solution to addressing the issue of poverty in India and any country, N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, said during a fireside chat moderated by Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of the brokerage platform Zerodha. "The government should function as a fair and transparent regulator. "On the entrepreneurs' side, they must recognise themselves as evangelists for capitalism.
The guidelines have been prepared in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that has envisioned that top universities in the world will be facilitated to operate in India.
The party is eyeing at expanding its footprint across the country and has tied up with the Congress to contest the Lok Sabha polls against the BJP in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat.
NEET is a court-ordered examination, supposedly aimed at meritocracy. However, over the past years when the incumbent Narendra Modi government at the Centre began implementing it, it took on political and casteist colours, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Alleging the Tihar Jail administration cancelled Delhi Minister Atishi's meeting with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the last moment, Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh on Wednesday said 'even the British rule did not see this kind of behaviour'.
'The focus needs to shift towards the ability to collect payments, particularly in tier-3 to tier-4 areas where acceptance is still lacking.'
'What my Labour government will seek with India is a relationship based on our shared values of democracy and aspiration. That will seek a free trade agreement (FTA), we share that ambition, but also a new strategic partnership for global security, climate security, economic security'
'The upper caste elite's belief that they are casteless is a belief that is available only to the upper castes. Because all the lower castes are reminded by society every day what their caste is.'
The government has identified nine key focus areas in the AI national programme, including agriculture, education, Indian languages, smart cities, cybersecurity, transportation, and finance.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday said the Centre is planning to set up 'PM Shri Schools' which will be aimed at preparing students for future and will be the laboratory of new National Education Policy (NEP). nbsp
Asked about the BJP's claim that its performance in southern states will be exemplary, Tharoor said, "The claim of an 'exemplary' performance is yet another product of the BJP's propaganda mill."
Right to apprenticeship, legal guarantee for MSP, passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, a nation-wide caste census and scrapping of Agnipath scheme are among the promises made by the Congress in its Lok Sabha polls manifesto released on Friday.
The politicisation of ethnic sentiments in the state has coincided with the ascent of the BJP and increased activities of far right Hindu outfits, which organised rallies and other events on religious occasions such as Ram Navami a festival not very popular in West Bengal- unlike states in north India.
The Centre, for the first time, has initiated a draft proposal for setting up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-like institute of national importance for animal health, education and research in Delhi to be called the All India Institute of Veterinary Sciences (AIIVS).
Narendra Modi's promise to allow states a bigger say in strategising and building foreign policy is unexceptionable, says TP Sreenivasan.
Vijay has a lot of young and middle-aged women fans, but as voters, they are possibly now with the DMK, or remain with the AIADMK. Recapturing this constituency would have helped Vijay's political launch and the GOAT script and dialogues could have gone a long way in helping out. But the kind of script and screenplay and the unusually and equally unnecessary long run-time (3 hours, 3 minutes) that GOAT offers takes the film experience over the heads of those that are not familiar with secret agents and uranium theft in Tamil cinema, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
"Gandhi's pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists" and "Organisations like RSS were banned for some time" are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
Atishi claimed that in recent times, many events have happened that indicate the possibility of the imposition of the President's Rule in the national capital.
These self-appointed well-wishers of AMU are basically for the control or police model of university governance. They have no faith whatsoever in the democratic functioning of the universities, observes Faizan Mustafa, former dean, Faculty of Law, and Registrar, Aligarh Muslim University.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday received Bhutan's highest civilian award, the 'Order of the Druk Gyalpo', making him the first foreign Head of the Government to receive the honour.
'We have essentially tried to set out an agenda for the next five years and it, in essence, represents the political commitment to that agenda.'
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
'A veiled secret of India's defence and strategic culture is the lack of a serious interest in them by the political class. The Indian National Defence University would fill this void,' feels Lieutenant General Anil Chait (retd).
Describing the assessment for preparatory stage (class 3 to 5), the draft recommends that "written tests should be introduced at this stage".
India abstained in the United Nations General Assembly on a draft resolution introduced by Pakistan and co-sponsored by China on Islamophobia, asserting that the prevalence of 'religiophobia' against Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and other faiths facing violence and discrimination must also be acknowledged rather than singling out just one religion.
