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There is no doubt that the Modi government has showed greater urgency in unearthing unaccounted money stashed away by some Indians in tax havens and other countries, enjoying the advantages of the latter's banking secrecy laws.
'(Upper caste) leaders talk against the Constitution, reservations and the nation and still get away.'
Akhilesh believes his catchment area is the 4.1 million new voters who are 18 to 19 years old.
Though Indians were no strangers to scams, spectrum loss was beyond their wildest imagination.
Delhi power minister Satyendra Jain in an interview to Rediff.com contributor Upasna Pandey, says thatdiscoms will be able to cater to the peak power demand of up to 6,500 MW, provided residents cooperate by reducing peak time usage.
In order for somebody to do Big Brother kind of a job, one has to collect lots of data. Aadhaar collects very minimal data whether at the time of enrollment or at the time of authentication.
Right now, in Modi's Cabinet and in the BJP, there is no challenge whatsoever to Modi's leadership but even those leaders who have some potential, who the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh can think of backing in an unforeseen circumstance, are fast turning into damaged goods, reports Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
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?
Amid the Bharatiya Janata Party governments at the Centre and in Haryana beginning to turn the heat on him, businessman Robert Vadra, also the son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, recently ensured his companies filed their pending balance sheets.
'The Modi government has been taking credit for improvement in respect of the ease of doing business in India.' 'But when I look at the scams I cannot help feeling that it is too easy to do business with banks in India, if one is a Harshad Mehta, Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi and their tribe,' says former Union home secretary Madhav Godbole.
'It is not as bad an airline as it is made out to be: We serve wonderful food, the leg space is more, our cabin crew is warm and friendly.' 'The customer needs to be apprised of these things.'
CAG may not be the cure-all for the ills that afflict PPP projects and is perhaps a sub-optimal solution to the problem.
'The failure of the ECI to follow the Registration of Electoral Rules and create verified and audited rolls or even verifiable and auditable ones, highlight that the entire electoral roll is merely a compilation of names without any effort or intention for completeness, correctness or fair play.' 'We are fooling ourselves by electing our representatives based on faulty electoral rolls that do not represent the people of the constituency. Elections based on these rolls are neither free nor fair. Democracy is under siege,' says Dr Anupam Saraph.
"Will anybody want a servant that who is on vacation when needed at home? And nobody knows where he is," he continued.
The year gone by saw the high and mighty of the corporate world face the music in the Delhi High Court which held that the telecom majors are amenable to CAG audit and Mukesh Ambani's RIL struggling hard to get rid of an FIR lodged on gas pricing by the 49-day-old AAP regime.
No more than 62% of farmland acquired for Special Economic Zones has been used for its intended purpose of boosting manufacturing, exports and jobs
'Sonia Gandhi can't rejuvenate the party, her heir is fodder for stand-up comedians, and nobody in the Congress has the guts to question the Nehru-Gandhis.'
A group of retired civil servants also called upon the PM to reach out to the families of the victims in Unnao and Kathua and "seek their forgiveness on behalf of all of us".
Naresh Chandra, former cabinet secretary, diplomat and well-known strategic thinker, tries to explain what the Modi government is up to and assesses what will work and what may not work and why. He spoke to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com, also, on diplomatic issues.
The Supreme Court today ordered that former Comptroller and Auditor General of India Vinod Rai will supervise special audit of property of Kerala's famous Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple, which is facing charges of financial irregularites, and constituted a new administrative committee headed by District Judge, Thiruvananthapuram.
The prime minister and president stated their intention to expand defence co-operation to bolster national, regional and global security.
Non-Congressism is the answer to India's current difficulties, says Dr Shambhu Shrivastava, who gives a historical perspective of non-Congress experiments in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1998.
Indian cricket, it seems, pays overwhelming obeisance to a vapid, old adage: The more it changes, the more it remains the same.
One of the urgent tasks ahead for the new government should be to improve public trust in the executive.
Two decisions handed down by the Supreme Court have spread gloom in Kerala as they have shaken two basic faiths of a majority of the people in the state, says T P Sreenivasan.
'The Chennai floods in particular clearly show there is a nexus between corruption, disaster, destruction and death.' 'Urban development in India is the source of all corruption.'
'If you are in Punjab, Modi is omnipresent as if he is going to be chief minister of Punjab.'
'If he is in Uttarakhand, he presents himself to be the chief minister of Uttarakhand.'
'When he is in UP, he is touted as the chief minister of UP.' 'There is a personality cult which is being built around a person... that he is the panacea of every democratic exercise in India, from panchayat to Parliament.' 'Modi at some point will pay the price for trying to build a very ambitious personality cult.'
In the next few weeks, the Bombay High Court will hear the institute's petition to review its 2011 directive to vacate the land it occupies in Film City.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to deliver his third Independence Day speech on August 15, he is inviting ideas from citizens on issues he should speak on
While giving approval to commercially develop land in Gurgaon, the Haryana government considered Robert Vadra's name and status as proof of his company's financial capacity.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the vote of thanks to the President's speech on the opening day of the Budget session.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay discusses his latest book Bandhan: The Making of a Bank at Bandhan headquarters in Kolkata.
While the state's decision to take the road to Prohibition has been given a communal twist, there are several political imperatives of the move
Industrialist Naveen Jindal, fighting to win the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat for a third time, has more than just Narendra Modi to contend with. Joel Rai reports.
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Crony capitalism will of course generate investment and ensure profit for private capital, but it won't give employment or income to the people. If you can make money by selling coal or speculating in land, why produce electricity, why invest in research and development, why even set up factories, asks Praful Bidwai.
'Modi's more than dozen interviews are helping him fine-tune the rough edges of his campaign. He is trying to influence floating voters, undecided voters, non-committal and caste-neutral voters into deciding whether to go for the Lotus or not. These could have been Congress voters, but its divided house, torn between the old guard and Rahul Gandhi, seems to have got completely confused.' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt lists what the Congress did wrong to find itself in such a sorry mess today.
The Modi government's e-auction policy for coal, meant to shield the consumer against hike in electricity charges, has already led to serious allegations of cartelisation among the bidding corporates. Matters came to such a pass that the government at one point last week was considering inviting the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the matter, reports Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
'From the time Rahul Gandhi entered the scene, I started feeling dissatisfied. No true Congressman will be able to agree with the way Rahul Gandhi functioned. He has not attained enough maturity or wisdom.' 'You cannot compare Rahul Gandhi with Narendra Modi. When you take into consideration Modi's political experience and abilities, nobody can think of projecting Rahul Gandhi against him.' 'The main culprits behind such a humiliating defeat are Veerappa Moily and P Chidambaram. It was Moily who did the maximum damage to people and the party.' T H Mustafa, one of the first Congress leaders to criticise Rahul Gandhi, speaks out in this interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
I am not a quitter. I was with the United Nations for 29 years. I don't know whether I will have 29 years in politics, but I don't intend to end with just 5 years, Dr Shashi Tharoor tells rediff.com's Shobha Warrier
