'I have seen in action six prime ministers and ten chief ministers, considered stalwarts in their days, and it is the first time, in all my experience, that a prime minister has gone into such great detail, laying down even the standards of cleanliness that should be maintained in all offices,' says B S Raghavan, former chief secretary, West Bengal.
Ansari relinquishes office after a decade.
The Union government is keen to ensure financial security for unorganised sector workers
A glance back at some important events that occurred in 2018.
'I want to leave behind the bank stronger and better than when I took over.'
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
Much of the tardy reaction to competition is the result of LIC's legacy.
The target of $500 billion in bilateral trade by 2020 is doable, feels Anand Sharma.
'Too much energy these three years has been invested in turning the party into an election-winning machine.' 'To recover its mojo, the Modi government needs a more impressive set of economic figures to flaunt,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The government is by far the largest employer; job security is guaranteed for government employees, and their wages are set through once-in-10-year Pay Commission.
Who are the men the prime minister relies on to execute his impressive agenda?
Under attack over the alleged power projects scam in Arunachal Pradesh, Union minister Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday rejected allegations of wrongdoing and said those who have "planted" the story against him "will be beaten up with shoes".
'There is tension between the zones all the time.'
'...because we are truer to the spirit of the Hindu faith.' 'There is absolutely no question that the Hinduism of the mob lynchers, the people who have killed others because of what they are eating or how they are worshipping or the faith they belong to or what they're doing professionally, those are, to my mind, not Hindus at all.'
Finance minister tries to put house in order before reforms are unveiled in February.
Resettlement of refugees elsewhere is not the morally correct solution to the problem for it lets the perpetrators off the hook.
The government is looking at building by-laws and floor area ratio so that you can build up instead of out, thus requiring less land.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Congress accuses Centre of 'protecting' state BJP chief's son.
'A CEO is successful if he is able to retain the confidence of his shareholders. And the shareholders of India Inc have backed their prime minister-CEO to the hilt,' says Sudhir Bisht.
A glance back at some of the important ups and down Indian Inc faced in 2018.
It, however, lags other states on crucial parameters such as health care and rural poverty.
This is the Centre's highest-ever budgeted capital outlay.
The most immediate cause of worry is the recent volatility in foreign exchange markets, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tells the Assocham annual general meeting.
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
'The Opposition has no option but to make it an 'All versus One' fight to even think about winning.'
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
Addressing a joint session of Parliament on Monday, President Pranab Mukhejee spelled out the Narendra Modi's government's agenda. Here are the highlights of his speech,
But he is actively pursuing greenfield steel plants in Karnataka and Jharkhand; ultimately, only one of these might come up.
'I do not think Rajiv Gandhi at that stage had any influence on his mother. Indira Gandhi relied totally on Sanjay and she looked upon him as a dependable son.' 'What really affected people and eventually Indira Gandhi was the sterilisation drive. She lost so badly in north India because of these drives.' 'She is the one who has given this aura of 'the family' to the Gandhis.' The second and final part of veteran journalist Coomi Kapoor, whose book The Emergency: A Personal Account was published recently, to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com about Independent India's darkest phase.
In a surprise announcement in April, Sun and Ranbaxy -- at that time owned by Japan's Daiichi -- declared an all-stock deal to create India's largest and world's fifth-largest drugmaker in an over $4 billion deal.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday addressed the first joint sitting of Parliament as mandatorily required under the Constitution after the general elections. The address is the political, economic and foreign policy road map of the Narendra Modi government and covers virtually all crucial areas.
'Modi as the PM of the country has to take everybody on board and deliver on good governance. That is his responsibility. In that talking alone won't help, he's working.' Commerce Minister Dr Nirmala Sitharaman tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com how the Modi government plans to change India.
Jayalalithaa's attack on BJP's PM hopeful a little too late in the coming, says N Sathiya Moorthy
'My wife was asked to get out of an autorickshaw because she was married to me. My children were targeted and branded a traitor's children. In spite of the Supreme Court and the NHRC having cleared my case, the state government is yet to close it. Local politicians are behind this. Why can't they close the case, give me compensation, accepting gracefully that they have wronged me?' Dr S Nambi Narayanan, the scientist who was accused and then exonerated in the 1994 ISRO spying case, speaks to Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier about his continuing travails and his recent meeting with Narendra Modi.
The controversy over Sant Rampal and his army of followers taking the law into their hands has once again thrown the spotlight on the clout that India's godmen possess.
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