Can the country afford to have problems of such magnitude in the cities of Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, which not only are the major growth drivers but are also the biggest revenue contributors in their respective states?
'I feel more like a chess player, thinking for long hours how to make the next move," Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan tells Surajeet Das Gupta.
Once a boxing champion, life has dealt Krishna Routh a severe blow.
Glimpses of the change Narendra Modi promised million of voters were visible at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Modi has now no excuse, but to perform and change India for the better. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reports from the presidential palace. A feature on the swearing-in ceremony like none other.
'We eat first, they later; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we call them by their names and they address us by titles,' writes Tripti Lahiri, author of Maid in India.
Seeking a peaceful and secure neighbourhood amidst threat of terrorism and extremism, India and Kyrgyzstan on Sunday signed four agreements including one on bolstering defence cooperation and holding annual joint military exercises.
Nepal's remote mountainous areas have suffered "almost total devastation" from a powerful quake that claimed over 6,300 lives, aid agencies warned even as relief slowly began to reach far-flung regions amid fresh aftershocks that kept people on edge.
The ecosystems of India and China today jostle against one another across Asia and much of the world.
Silicon Valley can be replicated, but this will only be achieved so long as fresh talent is welcomed by both our countries - a move that will surely spark a billion ideas and discoveries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his over four-hour visit to the US Capitol established a personal rapport with top lawmakers and seems to have won over his critics.
'Corruption is rampant in every office in the state from the villages right up to Gandhinagar. I have witnessed all these issues first hand... Before Narendra Modi became chief minister Gujarat had a debt of Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore. Today it is Rs 180,000 crore. There has been six-fold jump in public debt in Gujarat in the last ten years... Every child born in Gujarat owes a debt of Rs 30,000 today. How can you call this development? Look at how high taxes are in Gujarat. Look at the condition of our public health system. There are not enough doctors or nursing staff in government hospitals; not enough teachers in schools and colleges.' Three-time BJP MLA Dr Kanubhai Kalsaria rips apart Narendra Modi's policies.
'Why can't we make it mandatory for all IAS and IPS officers to serve in the armed forces for a year before joining service? What stops us from making it compulsory for every Member of Parliament to spend three months, immediately after taking oath, in military barracks/maybe a few nights in the bunkers on the borders, to learn and understand the life of a fauji?' wonders Tarun Vijay, MP.
Samuel Stokes made India his home and participated in the freedom struggle. He was the only American to be imprisoned for sedition; the British CID maintained a special file on him.
One thing Beijing must understand is that India is not obsessed with being a threat to China but only wants a rightful place for itself in the world, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'India is no longer the India of the '70s and the '80s.' 'It's a large country with the fastest growing economy.' 'In working with India, you just can't go and humiliate the nation publicly.' USIBC President Mukesh Aghi tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com about how he advises American companies to do business with India, what he thinks of Modi's government and the way forward for the India-US relationship.
'Worryingly, intelligence assessments indicate that growing disaffection amongst the youth is ceding ground to fundamentalist Islamist groups like Islamic State,' reports Ajai Shukla.
During last week's Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama asked the media to leave and then screened videos depicting plausible scenarios pertaining to nuclear terrorism.
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
Formidable challenges including funds for the farm loan-waiver, and law and order stare him at his face, with the opposition claiming the misses have outnumbered the hits.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, February 20, irritated the Chinese government so much that it summoned the Indian ambassador to register its protest against Modi visiting a territory China claims as Southern Tibet.
Even Delhi does not have a full-time registrar of chits.
What happened in Uttarakhand is a national tragedy. Why couldn't Dr Manmohan Singh announce that he was forming an Uttarakhand Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, with himself as chairman but inviting Narendra Modi to become the deputy chairman, asks T V R Shenoy.
'Every time I step on stage, I feel like I'm performing the play for the first time,' Manoj Joshi tells Sadiya Updade.
'When incidents of stone pelting at the aircraft occurred, the boys were careful that they continued with the rescue because finally we had to save lives.' A senior Indian Air Force officer, who is a veteran of flood rescue ops in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Gujarat and the Bombay deluge, tells Archana Masih/Rediff.com about the rescue operations in Kashmir, one of the first such efforts in a densely populated and urban area.
India has a 'natural global partnership' with US, says PM.
'The past year has yielded extraordinary results in the strategic, commercial, and people-to-people components of the India-United States partnership, US Ambassador to India Richard Rahul Verma tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
'If we play our cards right, we may even benefit from the competition between the US and China as seen from increased investment from each of these countries into India.' 'The size of our market gives us an important lever of power which we shall have to play adroitly and intelligently,' points out Ambassador Gautam Bambawale -- who served as India's envoy to China -- in the Professor V M Dandekar Memorial Lecture 2019, delivered on March 8, 2019 in Pune.
Now that Tamil Nadu's tallest politician is no more, it remains to be seen how new political re-alignments could shape up, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The founder of the Republican Hindu Coalition first attracted attention in the US as the "Punjabi tycoon" who was a huge supporter of Narendra Modi in the US. 'He will be best for India. There is no better ally for the US than India in the region,' Shalabh Kumar tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
Orissa learnt its lessons from previous cyclones, particularly the 1999 super cyclone, whereas Uttarakhand has failed to do so from any of the previous natural calamities that hit the state, says Dinesh C Sharma.
Andhra Pradesh now comes third in ease of doing business.
'The National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party, as recent events suggest, are quite content as New Delhi's collaborators rather than trying to be true representatives of the Kashmiri people,' says Athar Parvaiz.
According to convention, Lieutenant General Praveen Bakshi should be named as General Dalbir Singh Suhag's successor as army chief
The ordinance has returned near absolute power of discretion in land acquisition, except in tribal areas, into the hands of the bureaucracy yet again
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
'Tibet remains a prickly issue between the giant Asian nations. China still claims more than 80,000 sq kilometres of Indian territory in the Northeast. Why? Just because Beijing refuses to acknowledge the McMahon line which separates India and Tibet, and this, simply because the 1914 Agreement delineating the border was signed by the then government of independent Tibet with India's then foreign secretary (Sir Henry McMahon),' says Claude Arpi.
'The provisions of the AFSPA must remain on the statute books given the increasingly violent and uncertain times.'
The British administration ignored the mounting evidence of violence between Hindus and Muslims... Military historian Barney White-Spunner traces the countdown to the tragedy in his book, Partition.
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