A day after Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Minister Shivpal Yadav said that no minister will be sacked without probe in the murder case of a journalist, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday asserted that his government would ensure no injustice is meted to anyone.
The 75-year-old Samajwadi Party patriarch, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has been publicly rebuking the 42-year-old Uttar Pradesh chief minister of who also happens to be his son. Is the public display of anger real? Or is it just a way of fooling the public? Sudhir Bisht spoke with some keen observers of politics in UP to find out what they feel about Netaji's anger.
Aseem Chhabra introduces us to the best of Berlinale.
It would be a huge achievement if the new administration manages a successful transition to some sense of domestic and international normalcy in these frantic times marked by the pandemic and rise of illiberal regimes across the world, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
A chartered accountant by training, Bala understands the nuances of electoral politics.
'You can never say never in politics.' 'We may still see the return of AAP, but hopefully not of the same abusive politics again,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The newly-formed common forum of Northeast insurgent groups based in Myanmar has posed a renewed threat to security and peace in the troubled region.
'Is Xi's China stable?'
'No one can say whether the regime will fall all at once or if its leaders are devising a new solid and competitive -- anything but democratic -- model.' A fascinating excerpt from Francois Bougon's Inside The Mind of Xi Jinping.
'He still has to deal with party norms and traditions and has been careful to follow the order of seniority,' points out Claude Arpi.
'Modi cannot content himself anymore with merely indulging in Congress bashing and referring to the Gujarat 'miracle'. He'll have to show that his party is as clean and as innovative as the AAP. And this is impossible because AAP is new and the BJP is now old: the people have tried it already. What they have not tried already is Modi, and this is what may make the difference,' says the respected political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot.
'Both Nehru and Patel were thorough gentlemen and whatever their differences never disrespected each other.' 'Neither Modi nor Rahul Gandhi has much in them to claim such legacies.' 'They are symptomatic of the sad days that have befallen the nation midwifed and contemplated by Nehru and Patel,' says Mohan Guruswamy.
'One big leader said you might get 3 lakh votes and still lose.' 'I said if I do I will make sure you are sleepless because it will be me and three lakh people.'
The Opposition is putting up a symbolic fight for the presidential polls as it knows that the BJP has the numbers to get its candidate elected to the top post.
'Rather than 'consolidate' the Hindu majority votes, as the BJP-RSS combine has been known and wont to try, this time round PM Modi has himself taken the party to the next step, by seeking to create a new divide within the majority community, a la V P Singh in his time.'
The Bihar CM may be in the Opposition but his endorsement of Ram Nath Kovind, the NDA's presidential candidate, is among the many recent decisions that puts him apart from the others.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton will face her first major political test on Wednesday when she shares the stage with four other aspirants at the party's inaugural debate of the 2016 presidential campaign.
'Hindu middle class doesn't like anti-Muslim rhetoric'
Sushma Swaraj has fought battles fearlessly, lost a few, and won many. By rights, according to many, she is the one who should have been declared the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate for this year's general elections. But that didn't happen. Is that why she is so quiet these days?
With exit polls forecasting the National Democratic Alliance staging a comeback to power, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday said his party could not be written off and it would fight for "politics of secularism" whether it forms the government or sits in the opposition.
In the event of a triangular contest the winning party will need about 40 per cent of the votes polled. And it is here that the votes of the numerically smaller communities will come into play.
"Will anybody want a servant that who is on vacation when needed at home? And nobody knows where he is," he continued.
A photo of a black police officer helping a white supremacist during rival rallies held in South Carolina in the United States by African-Americans and members of the white fanatic group Klu Klux Klan has gone viral and is generating positive reaction.
'This is the first time since Independence that we are facing such a despairing situation.'
Voters will decide the fate of 456 candidates in 32 constituencies spread over six Naxal-hit districts.
The EC, which reserved its order on the dispute over 'cycle' symbol, has kept both sides guessing with leaders of warring camps exploring various scenarios as little time is left for process of filing nominations to start for the first phase of the staggered polls in Uttar Pradesh.
'Antony and I have been friends for over half a century, and I know the man does not tell lies. The problem is that what he believes to be the truth might not actually be true. He may believe that India needs the Congress, and that the Congress in turn needs the Nehru-Gandhi family, but that does not mean that India shares those articles of faith,' says T V R Shenoy.
Even as politics engaged him more, he never hid his way of life. On one occasion, Morarji Desai pleaded with him to stop drinking publicly. "You stick to your pissky and I'll stick to my whisky'' he is supposed to have told him.
As football fans arrive to watch Euro 2016, France's trade unions have undertaken a series of strikes to provoke a make-or-break situation. Claude Arpi encounters both Gallic beauty and ugliness in the country of his birth.
'As general elections draw near, the BJP and the JD-U (in whatever form it is) will do a deal -- the state to the JD-U in return for support at the Centre for the BJP.'
'Almost deified by enough Indians now, never mind his politics and, worse, economics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said Mumbai and Amritsar will witness "fireworks" if BJP loses Bihar assembly polls, alluding to its strains with allies.
Recent IMF forecast said China's growth is expected to slow down.
Its governing allies are not happy on the economy and complain of ignored concerns but find themselves unable to be assertive.
Ram V Sutar, 89, has already created more than 200 distinct statues, many of them massive. Now, he is a leading contender for the commission to produce the world's largest statue: A 597-foot tall rendering of Sardar Patel, an independence leader who played a crucial role in uniting India's fractious states.
'If the 'ideology' is just Hindutva, meaning cattle slaughter, temple issue, love jihad, joined with random acts on the side of economics and foreign policy, then we are in deeper trouble than we think,' says Aakar Patel.
We Indians simply cherry-pick those aspects of other cultures we like and reject what we consider unsuitable. Most of us recognise it as globalisation, says Kanika Datta.
Committed to secularism; wouldn't remove the word, says M Venkaiah Naidu
Communist China has recently developed a great expertise in 'soul reincarnation', feels Claude Arpi
Making no effort to conceal his prime ministerial ambitions, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Saturday said the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections were "a matter of honour" for him.
Brushing aside opposition from the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam and other parties in Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa but did not give him any assurance on which way India will vote on a the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution for an independent international probe into rights abuses during the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
