Modi's tweets talk about the celebration of democracy and also puts emphasis on the education of girls, says Mayank Mishra
'Modi's visit is path breaking in the sense that India has come out of the closet and is prepared to deal with Israel openly and in a host of fields, military as well as civilian,' says P R Kumaraswamy, one of India's leading experts on the Middle-East, currently in Israel.
'Indian politics has had three-and-a-half master narratives -- secular nationalism, Hindu nationalism, justice for lower castes and regionalism. The AAP seeks to go beyond that. Therein lies its promise and its challenge,' says Ashutosh Varshney, Brown University professor and author of book Battles Half Won, India's Improbable Democracy.
'Some intolerance is there in society. Fortunately, a majority of Indians are tolerant.'
BJP-supported students' union, aided by a friendly government, is aggressively settling historical scores with Leftist students' organisations.
Given Modi's penchant for springing a surprise, the BJP nominee for next President could be anyone. The only thing certain is that it will be an RSS person, reports R Rajagopalan.
Reform ideas do not occur overnight and evolve over the years.
Together, they controlled nearly Rs 26 lakh crore of assets at the end of FY16.
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Maneesh Sharma's Fan should be good. It will have Shah Rukh doing something entirely different from what he has been doing recently.'
Rohith, like Mahatma Gandhi, was not allowed to speak the truth by the forces who killed him, said Congress vice president.
A homoeopathic state of mind pervades our thinking in governance and infrastructure-building. Do it in small, harmless doses, but nothing bitter, sharp, or bloody, says Shekhar Gupta.
'They have realised that class war is not possible in India, so they are trying to bring about a caste war.'
Eight states and Union Territories have Muslim share of population in excess of national average of 13 per cent. Mayank Mishra report
Exemptions, and the fact that farm income is outside the tax net, ensure that India's tax-GDP ratio stays low.
The prospects for strong, sustained economic reforms do not appear to be promising in India.
'Why should the people of Odisha divert water from the Mahanadhi when 13 out of 32 districts are chronically drought prone?' 'Water is a state subject. Can you really nationalise rivers for which you need drastic amendments in the Constitution?'
Here are Aseem Chhabra's picks -- 'films that mattered to me, entertained me and will stay with me through the year.'
'To be complimented for a fantastic performance after just viewing the trailer! This never happened to me before.' 'If you have given a party a mandate for five years, stop blaming it for everything under the sun.' 'My kind of films do not make stars. Now we, the actors, after years of struggle, have created a parallel industry where we have made a name for ourselves. But stars we are not nor can we be.' 'For a boy coming from a remote village of Bihar at the Indo-Nepal border where no transport was available to commute to the nearest town, even coming to Delhi and then Mumbai and finally watching himself on the silver screen was a huge thing!'
The decision to introduce vastu shastra as a part of the architecture curriculum at IIT-Kharagpur has polarised architects in the country. Nikita Puri reports.
Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari's Bareilly Ki Barfi had the critics reaching for the stars. But that is just the tip of the iceberg discovers Rediff.com's Savera R Someshwar.
Repromulgation is a perennial malaise; and judges must clarify -- indeed, revisit -- the rules that govern this practice, argues Shubhankar Dam.
Hyderabad-based Anshul Sinha is making hard hitting films on important social issues, but there are no takers.
The facts remain cloaked in mystery, but the legend goes that Talpade had created a flying machine powered by mercury and solar energy, and based on ideas outlined in Vedic texts.
'The extended Bose family is insisting that the Japanese government must release all the information they have on Bose's ashes. It cannot be forgotten that Bose was in Japanese care when his 'death' occurred. Ultimately, it is the Japanese who hold the secret about what happened to him.'
'Bandaru Dattatreya shouldn't have blindly accepted what the ABVP told him.'
Aseem Chhabra lists the elements that he loved and was pleasantly surprised by in the movies.
GM is already in our food chain for years. The approval for indigenous GM mustard should put fake fear-mongering to rest, says Shekhar Gupta
The man behind Aligarh Muslim University 200 years on.
'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.
Rahul would know that fealty can be a fickle thing, and that if the Congress bucks the trend and actually wins the next national election, selfies with him would find their way from phones to walls, replacing those taken with Modi.
The shift to gross calorific value-based grading of coal aligned domestic prices with international benchmarks.
Biden said, "One of the reasons why President Obama called our relations with India, quote, "a defining partnership of the century ahead" is that India is increasingly looking east as a force for security and growth in Southeast Asia and beyond."
The truth is not that Chandrababu Naidu's centre-right policies led to his defeat but rather almost the reverse: his defeat, and for that matter that of the NDA at the Centre, was widely -- but falsely -- interpreted as a rejection of their economic policies, rather than put down to bad luck and conventional anti-incumbency., say Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya.
Internet-based systemic wisdom connects machines and people, and will drive next-gen enterprises, said Huawei's Yatish Nagavalli.
Judge Srikanth 'Sri' Srinivasan is the front-runner to replace the late Justice Anthony Scalia on the US Supreme Court.
Naresh Chandra, former cabinet secretary, diplomat and well-known strategic thinker, tries to explain what the Modi government is up to and assesses what will work and what may not work and why. He spoke to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com, also, on diplomatic issues.
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to allow us to project his real personality to let the people of India know exactly what he really was. He was always shying away from greater public exposure. Since the last two years we have seen enormous criticism, ridiculing the prime minister. He has been made into an object of jokes. It certainly hurts. I think this man deserves lots of good reviews... His contribution to social policy, his contribution to the economy, his contribution to coalition management, his contribution to foreign policy.' Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Singh's former media advisor who is in the eye of a storm over his book on the prime minister UPA speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
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