Among the better painted buildings in rural Bihar are hospitals run by the state government. Archana Masih travels to a village in north Bihar to find out what lies within. As Bihar goes to the polls, Rediff.com looks at the state through the lives of its people.
'Persisting with the inequalities, indeed seeing them get worse, is no one's prescription for national unity,' notes T N Ninan.
Around 29 trains have been delayed by two to five hours due to foggy weather, a railway official said.
If the Congress reached 90, it would have a pretty good chance of holding the BJP below the 272 mark. A hundred seats will rock national politics, argues Shekhar Gupta.
'Did the government learn any lesson from the disasters of 2008, 1987, 1975?' 'Certainly not!' 'They are making people believe that the 2017 flood was unexpected, so no preventive effort towards reducing the loss of human lives was to be expected from the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The Indian Cricket Board's main emphasis this year is to ease the North Eastern teams into mainstream.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have got a tough fight in Varanasi had Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contested against him as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) candidate, feel party workers from the temple town.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took stock of the damage caused by the earthquake in eastern India and has spoken to the chief ministers of Bihar, Assam and Sikkim, government sources said.
Signalling both change and continuity, India's new government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third consecutive term, got into work gear on Tuesday with cabinet ministers and ministers of state filing into their respective offices to assume charge.
'Bringing in Dr Mohan Yadav as the Yadav-OBC face from Ujjain as chief minister, and a scheduled tribe leader Jagdish Devda from Mandsaur district, and a Brahmin face Rajendra Shukla from Rewa, the BJP is making an attempt to put in place a new caste equation in the state keeping an eye on the general elections next year.'
Neighbours of Lalit were surprised to see his images on news channels, recalling him as a reserved individual who seldom engaged with the community at Burrabazar in Kolkata.
The cyber crime division have booked the BJP state unit chief under sections of inciting violence and promoting enmity between groups among others.
Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan on Monday demanded a thorough probe regarding the alleged attack on Bihar migrant workers and bring the culprits to book, and ensure a hospitable atmosphere for the workforce in Tamil Nadu.
'He has emerged as a formidable leader who cannot be ignored anymore, who cannot be mocked.'
An upset Nitish Kumar on Thursday made it clear that north Indians, particularly Biharis, do not need a certificate from anybody on being law abiding. He was reacting to Delhi's Lt Governor Tejender Khanna remarks that north Indians take "pride in violating the law".
'I found it unbelievable that L&T said 45,000 jobs were waiting to be filled because of unavailability of suitable skillsets.' 'So, when the Opposition sweepingly says there are no jobs, I'm sorry... I'm not saying it's raining jobs, but there are jobs. The (skill) gap has to be bridged.'
'In Bihar, the Dalits are not a consolidated socio-political constituency,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Finally the winter sun was streaming through the airplane's window, shining gloriously above the thick, frothy blanket of fog.
What is Change really like in Bihar? Once seen as India's basket-case, what is its turnaround story like?
Faced with a problem of suitable brides, Thamizhnadu Brahmin Association to cast net in UP and Bihar.
BJP leaders hit back at the DMK and asked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi if he agreed with the insulting remarks of its Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partner against the north Indians.
Five days before the Big Opposition rally in Patna, one of the Mahagathbandhan's allies will walk out of the ruling alliance.
Utkarsh Mishra's impressions of the Narendra Modi roadshow in Varanasi.
A parliamentary committee has recommended that the medium of instruction in technical and non-technical higher education institutes such as IITs in Hindi-speaking states should be Hindi and in other parts of India their respective local language. It said the use of English should be made optional.
The Congress 'Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra', led by Rahul Gandhi, is scheduled to enter West Bengal from Assam on Thursday, amid political ripples within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) in the state.
In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
'We can save 70 patients out of 100, if they reach a hospital well within time.' 'The most crucial aspect is time.'
Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Tax devolution shares, which threaten to create a north-south divide among states, may have more to do with per capita income, and not so much with population.
Ironically, rival Tamil Nadu governments expend the most on social welfare schemes, especially targeting women and youth and children, but that money comes only by selling more liquor. There is always the specious plea, which has been peddled very many times in the past, that without licensed liquor, drinkers would go after hooch and there could be more hooch tragedies and hooch deaths. No one is convinced, but no one can dispute it either, comments N Sathiya Moorthy.
Farmers on Saturday evening ended their three-day 'rail roko' stir that hit the movement of trains, causing inconvenience to passengers in Punjab and Haryana.
Ten sensitive installations in six states and one Union territory have been declared out of bounds for the general public, with the Centre saying any information with respect to certain activities carried out at these premises may be useful to India's enemies.
Hundreds of people are still seen attending the rallies without wearing face masks and pushing and shoving each other for space.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Given the reality of the disparity and the enormous shift over the last 50 years, this can be done without an open and frank conversation with the people, something that has not begun and, knowing the style of our leader, is not expected to begin, asserts Aakar Patel.
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