Rajeev Srinivasan on how India has continued to disappoint, but could outdo Singapore one day.
'The Hindu quest for political power in terms of a Hindu identity can pose a problem for tolerance, as the alignment of religion with power often does.'
'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.
'It is a great misfortune that the Nehruvian Stalinists of India have colluded with the grand project of demeaning and destroying Sanskrit. Today, the number of Sanskritists in India is low, and falling,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
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.
The capital's ever-shifting power class remains unsettled and unnerved seeing the power, favour, nepotistic and quid pro quo pillared superstructure gradually crumble under Narendra Modi's watch -- the only mantra that seems to be taking centre stage is that of performance, implementation and delivery, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
'There are thousand ways to pressure Pakistan to make it behave.' 'Going to the ICJ was the worst possible option,' says Colonel Anil A Athale.
'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.
'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.
'It is possible that in his perambulations from the company of Baba Ramdev to that of Anna Hazare and finally to the BJP, he hasn't had time to refurbish his memory of what he may have read earlier,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'Nehru once told JRD, "I hate the mention of the very word profit".' '"Jawaharlal, I am talking about the need of the public sector making a profit!" JRD replied.' 'Nehru reiterated, "Never talk to me about the word profit, it is a dirty word".' A fascinating excerpt from Shashank Shah's The Tata Group: From Torchbearers To Trailblazers.
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.
'Why do visas require the intervention of India's Union ministers? Does any civilised nation assure visas like this over Twitter?'
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.
'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.
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.
'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.)
'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.'
'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.
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
'I am in mortal danger not personally, but politically,' Mani Shankar Aiyar tells Anjali Puri.
'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.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
'The situation in the country is very scary.' 'There is an increasing attack on the Constitutional democratic rights of our people.'
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.
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
'Earlier India as part of the Third World fought for the rights of the Palestinians. But oddly the defeat of the Congress and the decline of the Nehruvian imagination has altered such perceptions. The new middle class expresses an open sympathy for Israel, contending that Jews like many Hindus has been misunderstood,' says Shiv Visvanathan.
Perhaps, the most misunderstood aspect is the role of the state.
'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.'
'Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance?" the finance minister writes in a Facebook post.
Eminent Punjabi writer and Padma Shri winner Dalip Kaur Tiwana decided to return her award protesting "recurrent atrocities" on Muslims in the country, as another Kannada writer joined authors giving up their Sahitya Akademi Awards against "growing intolerance".
If you don't have power in a game you are masters of, the world will walk all over you, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'To consider BRICS anything more than a temporary club with some common interests would be folly. The goal should be to induce others (Japan, ASEAN, South Africa) to align with us -- a non-threatening, democratic nation, rather than with malevolent China or waning America. For us to consider aligning with either China or the US would be absurd. India is just too big to be a sidekick,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Are moving towards a political culture that provides more space for violence and a paranoid political rhetoric,' asks Nitin Desai.
'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.'
'It is clear that Britain is a country with a limited future,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
The court case in India against Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus was in a way initiated in Atlanta, Georgia, by a group of Indian-American businessmen including Dhiru Shah, who have been fighting against several controversial books on Hinduism by Western thinkers and professors in recent years.
World trade has been growing slower than world GDP since 2012.
What is the road ahead for Rahul Gandhi? Shehzad Poonawalla offers a blueprint.
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