The country may become militarily impressive, pile on GDP and the durbar of the ruling party may fill with the wealthy indebted to the rulers for their riches. But the spontaneous camaraderie of a free people will diminish and with it, our shared ownership of the country, warns Shyam G Menon.
By offering aid to China in its hour of need we will create an opening to Xi Jinping to rectify his policy towards India, argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
India is poorer than the world average and so naturally has a greater percentage of poor people and a lower percentage of rich people. Yet using absolute numbers, India has more of almost everything, which is misleading, says Debraj Ray and Maitreesh Ghatak.
'Since there is no photo-op, or quick fix solutions, politicians do not want to address climate change. It is very unfashionable.'
'If the central government does not give rights to the people of Ladakh, then it won't be good for our country.'
The world needs to wake up to this new dimension of war at sea and be prepared to face the 'unknown enemy' who have the advantage of attacking at their choice of location and time, cautions Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
'The kind of situation we are seeing...we don't believe that this can happen in a settled democracy like India'
India's real risk is not that crony populism would fail, but that it would succeed, consolidating a path that is fundamentally a trap, both in terms of social inequalities and long-term growth, says Michael Walton.
Introducing UCC is a challenging task for any government. The complexities are real and difficult to negotiate as it deals with sensitive religious and cultural sentiments. How can it strike an easy balance between individual rights and community interests?, asks Ramesh Menon.
Will BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
'When Covid first struck, the lockdown resulted in clean air in major Indian cities.' 'You were able to see the Himalayan range from Ludhiana.' 'In Delhi, you were seeing deer and stags all over the city because there was no traffic.' 'It was incredible. Nature was waiting to come back.'
It is only the Indian approach of holding on to multiple realities and contradictory ideas simultaneously that is likely to deliver peace and progress. Binary logic is out of sync with reality, notes R Jagannathan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggested that if the Congress comes to power, it would redistribute wealth of people to Muslims and cited former PM Manmohan Singh's remark that the minority community had the first claim on the country's resources.
In a memorandum submitted to Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey, the 21 opposition MPs who signed the document demanded urgent rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected people to bring peace and harmony to the state.
Talking about the ICC T20 World Cup in the West Indies/US this year and inclusion in 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, he said that the T20 World Cup in New York will be driven by expats.
Elections are not won or lost by expounding on such macro-economic matters. For the aam admi, what matters in manifestos are promises that will improve their quality of life, notes Vinayak Chatterjee.
India have been the FIH's top market in the last decade or so in terms of sponsorships and monetary benefits, and the world body official stressed that the country will continue to hold its significance despite the sport spreading its wings to other parts of the world.
'Modigate is snowballing into a huge thing with the electorate. The BJP is in for huge punishment by the electorate.'
Controversial MP and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sakshi Maharaj stirred a fresh controversy by holding Muslims responsible for population boom at a public event in Meerut on Friday.
The Modi minister, known for his controversial statements, dropped another bombshell on Thursday.
Due to globalisation, growing economy, aging population and changing lifestyle, India will face a tsunami of chronic diseases such as cancer.
The only visible hint of the impending election is the hoardings put up by local election authorities, urging citizens to exercise their franchise.
Stressing on the need to protect both lives and livelihoods, he said public health action in India and across the world must be continually guided by evidence from four key questions -- how transmissible is the variant, severity of the disease it causes, how well vaccines and prior SARS-CoV-2 infection protect and how common people perceive risk and follow control measures.
It is our only chance of avoiding a repeat of our catastrophic second wave, asserts Naushad Forbes.
Dharavi, which is located in India's commercial capital Mumbai, is spread over an area of 2.5 square kilometres and has a population of 650,000. People live in shanties and dilapidated buildings with narrow lanes and open sewers.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday expressed his regret that the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota was not provided under the Bill brought by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2010.
'There are many things we need to work on.' 'At the heart of it is, one, the extent of inequality, which is not good for democracy and nation; two, a structural decline on how a country ought to function, how people should be held accountable, whose role is what.'
Deriving from Narendra Modi's continuing charisma, the proposed scheme, if and when implemented, can cut both ways. That is to say, if Modi can win, he can lose. Or, someone else in his place, later on, could lose as much as he could win in his time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The panel also stated that without the lockdown the country would have witnessed a peak of over 140 lakh cases.
In his farewell remarks posted on the Chinese embassy website, Sun said it is only natural for important neighbours China and India to have some differences but the key is how to handle the differences.
Every young diploma and degree holder in the country will have the right to apprenticeships in the private and government sectors, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the challenge of the Covid pandemic is not fully over yet, with the increase in coronavirus cases in the last two weeks manifesting the need to stay alert, and underlined that vaccination remains the biggest protective shield against the virus.
'If your oxygen saturation is okay and is maintained after the six-minute walk test -- which has been described all over the world -- and you do not have an unrelenting fever, then you can even be managed at home.'
'Israelis not only harassed Palestine Muslims, but also Christians.' 'Palestinians have been telling Israel that this will blow up the situation, but they would not listen to us.'
'Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person -- other than Modi -- in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?' asks Prem Panicker.
'Our villagers used to go up to Finger 4 and Finger 6, but today the Chinese are there.' 'Since April 2020, Chinese troops have blocked Indian troops from reaching at least ten patrolling points running from the Depsang plains in the north to Pangong Tso lake in the south.'
'As soon as the violence broke out, they should have stepped in and sent a message that the state is there to stop this violence.' 'Had they done it right there, the situation would not have gone out of control.'
Anmol Ambani, the eldest son of industrialist Anil Ambani, has lashed out against a new round of lockdowns being imposed amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, saying such restrictions do not concern health but control and that they destroy the very backbone of the society and economy. The 29-year-old former executive director of Reliance Capital Ltd in a series of tweets lambasted the new semi-lockdown rules hurting small businesses and daily wage earners. "Professional 'actors' can continue shooting their films. Professional 'cricketers' can play their sport late into the night. Professional 'politicians' can continue their rallies with masses of people. But YOUR business or work is not ESSENTIAL. Still don't get it?" he said in a tweet.
Besides the four ministerial berths, the Congress has also sought the post of Speaker of the state assembly, but Kumar is not keen on giving that, sources said.
'If you keep on irritating the body by allowing all kinds of pollutants to get into it, the body cells are going to get irritated and cancer will come.'
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