In the crazily complex cauldron that is India, where caste, community, class and cash are just the primary ingredients, no one has yet come up with a fool-proof method to ascertain how voters make up their minds, on which button to press, in the privacy of their 'confessional' booths, notes Krishna Prasad.
Devanik Saha wonders if saffronisation of India is on the rise
'The belief that FDI will shift from China appears to be a strategy of politicians to keep the media busy, chasing irrelevant news to ward off pressure and questions about the government's plans to deal with COVID,' observes Debashis Basu.
Despite a poor show, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah chose not to resign stating that the verdict was a not a referendum on his government. Mahesh Kulkarni reports from Bangalore
'The non-violent movement would not have brought freedom to the country, that had to be an armed struggle.'
UP and Bihar contributed 105 seats to the BJP's tally in 2014. It has now lost 8 Lok Sabha by-polls in the last four years, including three successive losses in UP and two seats in Rajasthan.
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
'Karna is the greatest warrior in the Mahabharata -- in fact, Arjuna is a nobody in front of Karna.' 'But Arjuna had a better advisor in Krishna than Karna.' 'Karna failed because he listened to the wrong advice given by Salya.' 'It just shows wrong advisors can land even the mighty in trouble.'
Sangh affiliates believe the government's apparent anti-poor message led to their loss
'This is India, bhai. This kind of country does not exist anywhere in the world.'
'Here I am, a BJP candidate, with a Muslim's blood running through my veins. This is simply magical!' P C Sorcar Junior, perhaps India's best-known magician, tells Rediff.com's Indrani Roy.
States are apprehensive of losing their rights to raise revenue during emergencies.
Given the controversy over Uttar Pradesh's population control moves, Hemant Shivsaran/Rediff.com digs deep to find out how many children BJP MLAs in UP have.
Political scientist Vinay Sitapati explores the role played by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in steering the reforms through in his new book Half Lion.
Forty years after the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the Sunanda K Datta-Ray recalls life when civil rights were suspended and press censorship was in force
'Kanhaiya Kumar and others of his ilk are now out on bail. But what about the NIT 'anti-nationals'?' asks Amulya Ganguli.
Rakhi Sawant is as uncensored as they come.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
'Challenges will come but we will stay the course. No big step can be taken if one is afraid of criticism. We will not flinch from criticism,' says Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
Complaints of electronic voting machine malfunctioning poured in from several booths on Tuesday during the third and largest phase of Lok Sabha polls which saw voters turning out in large numbers to cast their vote in 116 seats, including all constituencies of Gujarat and Kerala.
As the news of Kalam broke, condolences and tributes poured in from all corners of the country, reflecting the huge popularity he enjoyed both in and out of the highest office of the country that earned him the sobriquet of the "people's President."
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
'Will the BJP now replace a Muslim name for a street or a railway junction with Naipaul's name?' 'It is the least the party can do for its sole Nobel Prize-winning admirer,' says Amulya Ganguli.
On the 40th anniversary of the beginning of one of the darkest periods in our history, here are six painful facts about the Emergency.
Dr Raghuram Rajan's departure holds lessons for all, be it sections of the media, politicians or the people themselves. We need to learn how to value and retain talent. At the same time the talented must realise that talent alone does not ensure the top job, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'It will be interesting to see how Dr Patel handles gadflies with the maturity of egregiously petulant three year olds.' 'That Dr Patel does not, in so far as we can tell, cause society matrons to gush like hormonal teenagers can only be a good thing for him.' 'Look where their febrile imaginations and breathless prose took his predecessor.'
'Unity in diversity is a dated notion as India, today, is more unified and cohesive and yet more pronouncedly diverse than ever in its history,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
A used shipping container transforms the lives of women in a remote Tamil Nadu village.
Baba Ramdev may be controversy's child, yet he has a fan following not just in India, but almost all over the world. Sanjeev Nayyar recounts why he is fida about Patanjali products.
Congress accuses Centre of 'protecting' state BJP chief's son.
'If they were really serious (about conferring the Bharat Ratna on Savarkar) what were they doing for the last five years?' 'Why do they have to take so long?' 'Gandhi himself never got the Bharat Ratna so it does not really matter.'
The logic behind the BJP targeting Mayawati's votes.
She has been losing her party's core voters since the 2007 assembly polls, whereas the Samajwadi Party has managed to keep its flock together. The BJP believes she is a soft target.
'The ruling provides a Constitutional template, it draws boundaries, and there is this expectation that henceforth political parties will not make crude appeals to religion for electoral gains.'
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.
With an aggressive Opposition and unyielding government, important legislation could be the biggest casualty, as details of the helicopter contract surface.
'Every time I step on stage, I feel like I'm performing the play for the first time,' Manoj Joshi tells Sadiya Updade.
Whatever happens with this election, there is going to have to be a serious rethink of how the ECI, and elections, are run in India. There can't even be the whiff of impropriety. In a country that believes in democracy, EVM rigging isn't stealing an election, it's stealing the soul of a nation, says Cleo Paskal.
Arvind Kejriwal's every posture and mudra is carefully choreographed to resemble those of the original Mahatma, but the vision is stunted, the hidden agendas often leak out, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
Army was called in on Wednesday to help control widespread violence sparked by quota agitation by Patel community in Gujarat which has claimed seven lives even as curfew was clamped in several areas.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances