It is time we support Dipa Karmakar and not forget her by the time Tokyo Olympics roll in, the way we've forgotten so many others -- medal winners who have died in penury, who have had to sell their medals to survive, who have taken auto-rickshaws home from the airport. It is time that talent, and not money, decided who gets to be nominated into the International Olympic Committee.
Do Modi's foreign visits actually serve India or they nothing more than expensive tools for domestic positioning and image-building, asks Shehzad Poonawalla.
'He was a magnificent looking man -- perhaps the best looking international actor of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even in the current century. And quite definitely the first actor from Asia to make it big in the West,' says Aseem Chhabra.
'People on both sides of the Hindutva debate need to read and understand the texts first,' Bibek Debroy, translator of the unabridged Mahabharata, tells Kanika Datta as he gets started on a similar project for the Ramayana.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
Germany, as the locomotive of Europe, has much to teach India in manufacturing and process management, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Our policy seems to be to give away part of J&K, even though we are entitled to the entire state.' 'The Congress has done so, and the BJP is following the same policy.' 'No one is applying their mind to the legal position.' 'Kashmir is not a part of Pakistan under its own constitution.'
'India should think big: About how in a multi-polar world, India can indeed be one of the poles, rather than being a secondary power that has to worry about 'alignment' with one of the poles. A G3 in other words, India should look to getting others to align with itself rather than the US or China,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'There is a remarkable link between the eating of beef (or at the very least, tolerating the eating of beef) and India being a superpower.' 'In India, whenever an empire was strong, religion took a back seat.' 'Alternatively, whenever religion asserted itself, the main empire of India crumbled...'
Overseas education consultant NNS Chandra shares advice on how to pick the right international education.
Don't forget to make your pick for the newsmaker of 2015.
The Security Council as it is today is unable to bring peace and security in the world and so there is reason for countries like India to become members of the Council, Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
In his penultimate State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that the economy is improving.
