Unlike the regimes of Jayalalitha, Palaniswami and Karunanidhi, ministers are actually getting to make decisions on their own, with the unmentioned rider that they would be held responsible and accountable, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'We should not minimise the seriousness of Chinese encroachments because their perception is different.' 'Nor should we fall into the trap of accepting so-called 'buffer zones' in areas of overlapping claims. We cannot have buffer zones in our own territory,' asserts Ambassador Shyam Saran, a former foreign secretary.
Geetanjali Krishna looks at how one organisation's unique idea is helping marginalised communities to gain legal access.
T C A Anant, former chief statistician to the government, will soon be heading a panel to decide whether the monthly payroll data released by EPFO, ESIC and PFRDA could replace the quarterly enterprises-based survey on job creation by the labour bureau, the prime minister's office decided last week.
'Modi is still immensely popular and, therefore, he can sustain any number of policy failures.' 'Modi himself has worn multiple faces so it would be naive to think that the Modi of 2021 will be the same Modi that will be campaigning for re-election in 2024.'
Will Arundhati Bhattacharya be the RBI's first woman governor? Or will Urjit Patel succeed Raghuram Rajanas RBI governor when his term ends on September 4?
In the light of India's increasingly 'darkening' threat environment and the convergence of strategic interests between China and Pakistan, the IAF's declining combat capabilities are a cause for concern, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'India's relationship with China has been and will continue to be complex, delicate and sensitive,' says Rup Narayan Das.
'Potent nationalism doesn't just distract from the economic task at hand; it actively undermines it.'
'A lack of strategic trust and the 'persistent security dilemma' prevails between India and China,' points out Dr Rup Narayan Das.
The most pressing issue facing the financial sector is the rising stock of non-performing assets in the banking system
Second-line AIADMK leaders and cadres alike say that by starting the talks first with the BJP and committing the party to an alliance without discussing seat-sharing, the leadership might have commenced the coalition discourse at the wrong end. According to them, even 20 seats for the BJP may be too many, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'That an Indian can lead the world's top software company is an important milestone for Indian Americans and for America. But the larger message is for India itself: Imagine what Indians can achieve at home if they put their differences aside and start helping one another,' says Vivek Wadhwa.
Kim did not rule out diplomacy with the Biden administration despite that Pyongyang called Biden a 'rabid dog' after Biden labelled Kim a 'thug'.
'In the present era of strategic uncertainty and rapidly changing threats, no military professional now disputes the unavoidable necessity of a joint planning staff for the planning and conduct of joint operations so that integrated operations can be planned 'top down',' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
The Paytm employee, who tested positive for the contagious disease with flu like symptoms on Wednesday, came in touch with 91 people in Gurgaon, an official said, citing his counterpart in the suburban town.
Very few things can faze Madhukar V Kulkarni, a cop of 30 years. Yet, an innocuous smartphone scares him. For those like him in Maharashtra's cities, tech classes have stepped in to teach them how to embrace Skype & WhatsApp. Ranjita Ganesan reports.
'Right now, politics is operating in a state of suspended animation. That works to Modi's advantage.'
Had India agreed to join the trade pact, Indian markets would have been flooded with cheap Chinese products.
Commander Abhilash Tomy of the Indian Navy sailed the oceans and conquered likely death after a storm badly injured his spine and destroyed his boat. Archana Masih/Rediff.com met the decorated sailor who fought all odds to return home alive.
'There appears to be greater convergence of interests between China and the US in the Afghan-Pakistan theatre than between India and the US. This is hardly a recipe for a super-alliance,' says former foreign secretary Ambassador Shyam Saran.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list is harder to get into than Stanford or Harvard University. Meet the desis who made the cut this year.
While the DMK fears that the Congress with its poor strike rate will pull it down in the 2021 state elections, like it did five years ago, the ruling AIADMK is worried that the BJP may ultimately do a Bihar on it, relegating it to second place in Tamil Nadu, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Earlier, an inter-ministerial group used to take these decisions.
Without strategising together, Jayalalithaa's successor, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, and M Karunanidhi's son-cum-successor, M K Stalin, have used tough-talking on seat-sharing with allies, to replace charisma that they purportedly lacked, during the run-up to the assembly polls scheduled for April 6, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
It looked as if the BJP was hoping to use Rajinikanth to press their seat-bargain with the AIADMK. Now with the Rajini bait gone, the question now is not how much the BJP would settle for, but how much the AIADMK would be ready to offer, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The system has gone through three rounds of testing for its load-bearing capacity.
The report has identified some areas that need attention from India's policymakers.
With the launch of GSLV-MK III, slated for April, it will be able to cater to bigger satellites as well.
A long term solution to reduce India's Current Account Deficit will be to increase India's share of global merchandise exports, so that we are able use our exports to fund our imports, points out Chidambaran G Iyer, Senior Fellow, Pahle India Foundation.
'For the Tamil Nadu protestors to openly ask popular film actor Vijay Sethupathi not to don Murali in 800 is a travesty in every sense. It may have given them a cause to tell the world, and the governments in New Delhi, Colombo and Chennai, that the Sri Lankan ethnic issue was still alive in the state -- more so, during the current run-up to two major events in the first half of 2021,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Ahead of VK Sasikala's return to Tamil Nadu on February 8, there are some important questions facing her. One, does she carry electoral weight more now than her brainchild AMMK had in the 2019 LS polls? Two, can she retain or build upon the five per cent vote-share from that time? And finally, is there space for Sasikala to retrieve, first within the AIADMK and then across the state, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
India needs to be alert on how the Doklam standoff plays into the factional infighting in China's Communist Party, says Ambassador Shyam Saran, the former foreign secretary.
India's real risk is not that crony populism would fail, but that it would succeed, consolidating a path that is fundamentally a trap, both in terms of social inequalities and long-term growth, says Michael Walton.
'India could help in Afghanistan, but if it does too much, it will stoke Pakistan's paranoia and risk making the situation worse,' Michael O'Hanlon, one of America's leading experts on international security, tells Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa.
'It is less polarising than Hindutva.'
Tampering with electrical fittings of a car, subjecting it to improper maintenance or making unwarranted changes to it are the primary reasons behind the spurt in cases of vehicle fires, which have claimed several lives in the recent past.
Possibly for the first time since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called upon the nation to donate/sacrifice for the 'Bangladesh war' efforts, and also suffer blackout at nights with patience and pride, has the nation reacted so very positively to the government's diktat, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
