Some 230 kilometres from Kolkata, in West Bengal's Birbhum district, 500 children stand out because of their 'unconventional' education, says Anjuli Bhargava.
'It is impossible to get any of the top five movie stars in Bollywood for an honest one-on-one interview, which spans beyond seven minutes unless your media house has a marketing tie-up with the movie they are part of. Even then, they will rarely ever want to go outside their comfort zone and open up.'
'The forces of good are on the run.' 'But dark times also challenge people to fight.' 'I believe Indians will rise against these dark times.'
'Make cash available now, don't put people into suffering.' 'You should not come to a situation where the operation was successful and the patient is dying.' 'What did not happen in India for several years, you cannot do in 50 days.' 'This is agony and pain.'
The writing is on the wall -- and it is written in the blood of the women who 'died', 'ran off' or 'committed suicide' under mysterious, carefully unexplained circumstances -- that the only life that matters is one that belongs to an upper class, upper caste, politically connected male.
The Magna Carta was not quite a grand demand for equality, freedoms and rule of law but just a narrow demand for restricting the ruler's powers to ring fence the interests of the elite. But its consequences greatly expanded over the centuries into a charter, which guarantees individual liberties, equality and justice to all, irrespective of race, religion and class, says Mohan Guruswamy.
The euphoria of Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar will fade quickly if the Modi government does not raise its game, and focus significant monetary resources and managerial skills on making India's infrastructure truly world-class, says Ram Kelkar.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif continues his exhortation for US mediation in Kashmir, and harks back to his meeting with former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee when the latter had agreed to a resolution of Kashmir imbroglio; senior us officials assert there is 'absolutely no change in us policy' that Kashmir has to be resolved bilaterally. Aziz Haniffa reports.
The real Kathmandu is different from the Kathmandu of the news stories, writes Patrick Ward.
Get the latest from the world of football and more on Rediff.com.
Television news. Anarchists. Special Status for UP! And that man-who-wants-to-be-Pradhan Mantri so baaad. Sherna Gandhy takes them on.
'Cultural property crimes have been linked, by the United Nations and others, to terrorism.' 'These links show the perpetrators to be associated with major criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS.
'Every Ali obituary I read made the point that he 'transcended his sport' -- a reference to the many battles he fought with America even as he fought in America.' 'What the obituaries leave out is that Ali equally transcended the boundaries of geography and of information -- as witness the Chennai teen who assimilated that most mobile of fighters through still images shorn of context.'
he has to demonstrate the ability of his government to take a quantum leap, almost tantamount to setting the Ganga on fire, in the next six months, if not in 100 days, if the people were to take seriously the cascade of commitments spewing out of the President's address to both Houses of Parliament on June 9, says B S Raghavan. B S Raghavan suggests five practical propositions through which the Modi government can bring in paradigm changes.
The India that needs strategic alliances, defence cooperation and engaging meaningfully with neighbouring countries is quietly moving ahead with confidence, says Tarun Vijay
