The West has always preferred a timid, half intelligent and a dependent India rather than a decisively independent and self-reliant one. A pliable Indian leadership suits the West best, says Tarun Vijay.
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
Our problem is that we look at these words from a non-Indic perspective, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Non-Congressism is the answer to India's current difficulties, says Dr Shambhu Shrivastava, who gives a historical perspective of non-Congress experiments in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1998.
From early indications, the Modi government's foreign policy seems to be pragmatic and reciprocal, says K G Suresh.
In any controversy, the participants cannot decide who is right or wrong. A democracy has a process in place to settle these disputes: the judiciary. Dinanath Batra in true democratic fashion availed of that opportunity citizen and Penguin's decision was the outcome of a legitimate legal battle, says Vivek Gumaste.
'I have never seen anybody disliked more as prime minister than Modi.' 'What is interesting is in his prime ministership, no matter whatever happens in any corner of India, Modi is blamed for it.' 'Modi has not suspended any Constitutional liberties. No Opposition leader has been put in jail... Modi is not Hitler.'
'Both nations have a common problem: A rampaging, jingoistic and hostile China which is making substantial territorial claims. In the long run, Japan and India are going to be the victims of Chinese aggression -- so they might as well hang together to contain China,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
'We saw how vigorous democracy was when it dislodged authoritarianism under Indira Gandhi. We saw its vigour again when it voted Mr Modi out of humble origins as prime minister. It was Nehru who laid that foundation for India and what is worrying today is Modi's rather imperial style of functioning,' says writer Nayantara Sahgal.
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.
'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.
