'Non Resident Indians know that India's problems are the combination of many factors over the centuries, including foreign rule, lack of resources and the ever-growing population, among other things. Yet, India has achieved many things and even looks at Mars as a neighbour.'
'Why do visas require the intervention of India's Union ministers? Does any civilised nation assure visas like this over Twitter?'
He wrote a letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi who immediately accepted his resignation and relieved him of his charge as party General Secretary.
Master urban planner and architect Le Corbusier's principles of light, space and greenery are still evident everywhere in Chandigarh. Geetanjali Krishna finds a haven in the city.
'I hope he will continue to be what he is. And doing so, he won't be much different from those whose example he is being given right now,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
Major Gogoi thought like Chanakya when he tied a Kashmiri man on an army jeep to keep the stone pelters at bay, argues Rajeev Sharma.
'Even if Rahul doesn't emerge with flying colours -- at least initially -- during the jousts with the media, he will at least be posing a kind of challenge which will not be to Modi's liking,' feels Amulya Ganguli.
Books like Sunil Khilnani's Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, simple and straightforward though they appear, are instead powerful arguments for complexity, for empathy, and for curiosity
'The sorry image of a wailing leader visiting relief camps for riot victims was completely incoherent with what he did next, blaming the minority community for the disturbance.' Utkarsh Mishra pens a tribute from the heart.
Israel is determined to take the bilateral engagement to a different level that goes beyond defence hardware and intelligence software. Kanchan Gupta reports exclusively from Tel Aviv for Rediff.com
'What his minions do, we are not sure, but he has got to keep them under control. Pogroms against Muslims in India -- I don't think that is going to be his policy.'
'If Haider petitions the court and the government for legitimate rights it is called minority appeasement, but when Hardik orchestrates violence he is lionised, romanticised and given huge media space that ends up both legitimising and oxygenating his movement, no matter how contrary it is to the Rule of Law,' argues Shehzad Poonawalla.
Twenty two years before Kabir Khan's The Forgotten Army streams on Amazon Prime on January 24, 2020, his documentary of the same name was telecast on Doordarshan. On that occasion, Kabir Khan spoke to Amberish K Diwanji/Rediff.com about Netaji's Azad Hind Fauj and its many battles for India's freedom.
'There was an overt campaign and there was a covert campaign. The overt campaign may be development, government, and all this nonsense. But the covert campaign, which Mr Amit Shah was doing, was far more important with the help of RSS cadres. This has been an RSS election. From day one I have been saying, this is not Congress versus the BJP, this is Congress versus the RSS,' says Jairam Ramesh, one of the key strategists of the Congress party.
'The most striking comment Yasser Usman makes -- not only about Sanjay Dutt, but also our contemporary society -- is about the transformation that he goes through: From being a man who claimed Muslim blood to one who is a devotee of Hindu gods,' notes Uttaran Das Gupta.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
When Prime Minister Modi observes the first anniversary of his government at Nagla Chandrabhan, Deendayal Upadhyaya's birthplace in Mathura, on Monday, he shall be essentially reiterating his commitment to achieving the ideal of Upadhyaya's 'Dharma Rajya', a State free of inequality and of division, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
If you don't have power in a game you are masters of, the world will walk all over you, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Perhaps, the most misunderstood aspect is the role of the state.
The action against the Lucknow passport officer was a hasty reckless decision taken by an establishment playing to the gallery to appease the pseudo-secular elite of the country, the Lutyens Delhi lobby intent on discrediting the Hindu identity, and an action that blatantly violated the basic tenets of justice, argues Vivek Gumaste.
World trade has been growing slower than world GDP since 2012.
'Rahul Gandhi accuses the Modi government of being in thrall to corporate fat cats at the expense of farmers and other common folk. But the facts do not bear out this argument, as Indian farmers are relatively better off compared to the really wretched of the earth, the unfortunate landless, often itinerant, labourer. And since Rahul's ancestors are the ones who failed them, it is a little disingenuous of him to ignore them in his rhetorical flourishes,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'It is clear that Britain is a country with a limited future,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'The effect of demonetisation has been largely to drive black money above ground. But there are several interesting side-effects. One is the uncomfortable realisation that this can happen again, which is a deterrent to future sinners,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'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.'
'She must first change the Rules of Business 1961 that makes the defence secretary and not the defence minister responsible for the defence of the country!' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd.)
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 situation in the country is very scary.' 'There is an increasing attack on the Constitutional democratic rights of our people.'
'Today the Chinese think they can slap India, and there will be no consequences.' 'They must be made to feel the consequences through any and all means,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'I am in mortal danger not personally, but politically,' Mani Shankar Aiyar tells Anjali Puri.
'Xi Jinping got a dose of Modi's medicine inside the tent where he was being hosted on the banks of the Sabarmati river.' 'Modi reportedly told him, looking deep into his eyes: "This was not expected of your country. Can you tell me when the troops are withdrawing?".'
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Bata came up with new brands to beat industry competition.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created a flutter with his first Independence Day speech. While diverted the national attention to social issues, Modi smartly avoided political traps.
The absence of a clear underlying economic ideology in the Budget was quite evident, say experts.
What is the road ahead for Rahul Gandhi? Shehzad Poonawalla offers a blueprint.
'One big problem for the RSS is, while they spread their ideology of hard, Hindu-ised Indian nationalism, the absence of their own pantheon of modern nationalist giants. They missed out on the freedom movement quite comprehensively, in some ways comparable to the Muslim League and latter-day Communists. They have to find heroes elsewhere.' 'They borrow who they can from the Congress, like Madan Mohan Malviya and Sardar Patel, and then steal the entire lot of revolutionaries, from Bhagat Singh to Netaji, never mind that many of them were extreme leftists.'
'I have no problem with people from the right wing who speak with a certain integrity of position.'
'His selection is to honour the sentiment of the communal majoritarianism, satisfy the upper caste and continue the process of Hindutva.'
'Are moving towards a political culture that provides more space for violence and a paranoid political rhetoric,' asks Nitin Desai.
To look for lessons from Nehru's life to find a way out of the Congress' quagmire is probably futile, says Rahul Jacob
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