Here are photos from his life and career as India's pre-eminent defence scientist and one of the country's most popular president
This visa issue had gotten so embarrassing that former Defence Secretary William Cohen, now a member of the US-India Business Council's board of directors, who was presiding along with Ambassador Nirupama Rao at the launch, had to prevail upon Secretary of State John F Kerry and get the visas okayed.
Narendra Modi on Monday attacked the Congress-led UPA government over lack of a war memorial as he targeted the massive constituency in the armed forces, minutes after felicitating melody queen Lata Mangeshkar on the 51st anniversary of her memorable song 'Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon'.
If something stands out in the one year since Jayalalithaa's passing, it would be her famed leadership qualities and her ability to reach out to the party and the people above the second line, and also the state administration, to the exclusion of all the rest. Only Indira Gandhi had achieved it all in her time, and no other leader, possibly excepting Prime Modi Modi, could hold a candle to that, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The assumption is that the lines have been drawn and the two sides (India and Pakistan) have gone to battle. All of us, whether analysts or politicians or citizens or cricketers or housewives, must see the other side as an enemy and must reject everything it says or does even if we gain nothing from it. I am no longer able to subscribe to this stupidity,' says Aakar Patel.
The note ban is Modi's make-or-break gambit for 2019. Opposition leaders see a vulnerability and won't gift pre-eminence to the Congress, says Shekhar Gupta.
'In our media and general population the idea of 'strong posture' was successfully sold by Modi. This is now a liability for him, as he has discovered,' says Aakar Patel.
Kalam, who received seveeral prestigious awards including Bharat Ratna, played a crucial role when India tested its nuclear weapons at Pokhran in 1998 when the Vajpayee government was in power.
Here are 15 things you should know about Bharat Ratna Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
'The only effective defence against a suicide attack is 'pre-emptive' destruction of the attacker,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
That "Rollback Budget" ushered in an era of rollback.
Former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on Friday conferred with the Bharat Ratna.
Rustom, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, PadMan... ...Vishal Bhardwaj's next with Deepika Padukone and Irrfan, John Abraham's Parmanu, Anushka Sharma's Pari, Abhishek Kapoor's Kedarnath, Anil Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's Fanney Khan, Shahid Kapoor's Batti Gul Meter Chalu... Meet Prernaa Arora, the young lady above the title...
'We have Hindu values, Hindu customs, Hindu philosophy, Hindu way of looking at all religions as acceptable.' 'These are all great assets of India.'
'If Rao had, in fact, given a word to President Clinton in 1994 that India would not test, he would not have encouraged Vajpayee to test. The note, said to have been handed over to Vajpayee by Rao with the words, 'Now is the time to accomplish my unfinished task' may not have been a reference to nuclear tests at all,' says T P Sreenivasan.
'President Kalam pitched his dreams high. He will be best remembered for that feat.'
With the Rafale fighter deal stuck over price negotiations, can the prime minister step in and find a way out for both countries?
'I couldn't think of a more visible strategic form of cooperation than both of our armed serves using a similar weaponry jointly developed together.' Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC on what is expected in the India-US defence relationship during Prime Minister Modi's visit.
'The India-France relationship has been that of the elites of two countries, who appreciate each other's philosophical traditions -- whether it is ancient Indian civilisation and Sanskrit texts or the French tradition of Rene Descartes, Albert Camus, (Jean-Paul) Sartre... This is a drawback. It doesn't create the buzz, the excitement necessary for a relationship. We need more people-to-people contact, especially among students,' says former Ambassador to Paris, Rakesh Sood.
President Obama's coming visit to India has created quite a buzz, here is a look at all past visits of American Presidents to the country
BJP president Rajnath Singh has said that if the party comes to power in the next general election, its foreign policy wouldn't be much different from that of the Congress government. Aziz Haniffa in Washington
With the launch of the first indigenous aircraft today, India will join a club of nations like the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France that possess nuclear-powered submarines
'Imagine a scenario where a terror strike by Pakistan-supported jihadis causes thousands of deaths in India. India in retaliation destroys terror camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir.' 'There is a clamour for revenge in Pakistan and that country begins to fuel its missiles for a nuclear strike against India and that is detected by Indian satellites.' 'No sane government in India will then wait for the nuclear bombs to fall on Delhi before launching its own strike. To be effective, this may well involve nuclear weapons.' Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) says the change in the 'No First Use' pledge in the BJP manifesto is long overdue.
It is time the new government, unencumbered with the burden of past, initiates a wide ranging review and open debate on the security issues to rectify our short term and long term shortcomings. It has taken some wise steps but has to go beyond this to identify the structural weakness and create systems, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
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