'Many enter the civil services with the desire to do good work but get beaten by the system, step back or become part of it.' 'Ten fantastic officers out of 100 can completely change the game.'
'Mr Modi has a huge opportunity before him.' 'Whether he grabs it the way Mrs Gandhi did in 1969 or squanders it as he did in 2014 will determine his economic legacy,' notes T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Now Mr Modi has been offered a more real but different kind of war, which he has likened to the Mahabharat,' notes T N Ninan.
Anil Shastri, one of the late prime minister's six children, recounts memories of his father.
'Speaking this year from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he excelled himself in content, diction and delivery -- all extemporaneously flowing, replete with felicitous expressions and captivating word play. 'The only other Indian prime minister with whom he stands comparison is Jawaharlal Nehru who too shunned prepared speeches and established instant rapport with his audiences,' says B S Raghavan.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved 'Mission Karmayogi', dubbed as the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, aimed at capacity building of government employees to make them more "creative, proactive, professional and technology-enabled". The core guiding principles of the competency-driven programme will be to support a transition from "rules based to roles based" HR management to prepare the Indian civil servant for the future, according to a government statement.
Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala explains why he thinks Modi should be at the helm of India.
He will lay foundation stone for the 'Urja Ganga' project, aimed at providing piped natural gas to all the households in the city.
The two met during a training in Mussorie and it was love at first sight.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in the state demanded an apology from the Uddhav Thackeray-led government over this incident.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday asked bureaucrats to not be subject to political interference and advised that civil servants should tell politicians what cannot be done and why it cannot be done.
Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Swami Sakshi Maharaj on Tuesday invoked spirituality to seek peoples' support for the BJP in the upcoming Delhi assembly elections, saying he has come as a saint and should not be sent back "empty handed".
Trinamool Congress member Kalyan Banerjee was on Tuesday under fire from Bharatiya Janata Party and Left in Lok Sabha for his alleged objectionable remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leading to uproar and threat of censure motion being moved against him if he did not apologise.
IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, whose suspension by UP Government has sparked a controversy amid allegations that she was targeted for taking on the powerful sand mafia, on Friday met the Secretary to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
On the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Union Home Ministry is on a cleanliness drive and, in less than a month, has destroyed nearly 1.5 lakh files that had gathered dust for years.
'Whether it was a habitual expression of post truth or an open offer to India and Pakistan, even Imran Khan could not have believed it,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Making a strong pitch for growth of farmers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the country cannot move forward without their progress.
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
Notwithstanding the party denial of the possibility of national campaign by her, the Congress on Tuesday saw demands that Priyanka Gandhi contest Lok Sabha elections.
'Piyush Goyal is the chief and it is always the chief who is considered to be responsible.'
At a press conference after a meeting of the party's senior leaders, K C Venugopal said the Congress will also launch a massive signature campaign in which it aims to collect two crore signatures from farmers and the poor people against farm bills.
A number of Congress leaders across the country have gone against the party's stand in Parliament on abrogation of the provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir by supporting the Centre's move and a bill to bifurcate the state. The Congress has strongly opposed the move and the bill to bifurcate the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories.
In his monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat which he began by paying tributes to the 18 soldiers who died in the Uri attack on September 18, Modi said, "this cowardly act was enough to shake the entire country. There is mourning as well as anger in the country."
Congress on Sunday ridiculed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assurances to the farmers.
Veteran Congress leader and seven-time Member of Parliament Jaffer Sharrief has ended his over six-decade-long association with the party.
'Doklam was almost like a trailer to what is happening in Ladakh today.' 'Modi failed to take note and failed to act,' observes Harishchandra Dighe.
'Any normal human being, even if he is the American president, will find it hard, at least in the initial stages, to get over the gnawing feeling that Modi is Trump's man.' 'Modi should not be surprised if India and its requirements are treated as of low priority by Joe Biden,' warns B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'The uneducated think of their rights as a gift. This is deeply troubling.' 'If they were educated they could claim what is rightfully theirs.'
Congress MLA Ajay Rai was on Tuesday arrested along with 50 others in connection with violence and arson in Varanasi on Monday as the administration cracked down on miscreants in the holy city where the situation was peaceful amid continued police patrolling.
"In the last one year, I haven't seen any action apart from advertisements or showbaazi. I can't see any street which has become clean. I want to say that we all should work on this. Let us all talk less and work more," Kejriwal said.
Interacting with state chief ministers, Modi underscored the enormity of what he described as the world's biggest vaccination exercise, which begins from January 16, saying over 30 crore citizens will get the jabs in the next few months in India against only 2.5 crore people vaccinated so far in over 50 countries in around a month.
Coal Secretary Anil Swarup has been appointed as school education secretary.
'This film is a product of a dangerous trend to take just a sprinkling of truth, mix it with free-flowing speculation and present it as historical facts,' says Manavi Kapur.
No government bungalow in Delhi will henceforth be converted into any memorial, the Union Cabinet decided on Saturday, weeks after a row over Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh's demand for making his official residence a memorial of his father and former Prime Minister Charan Singh.
'The BJP's all-India plans can be expected to become clearer around 2022-2023, particularly if -- as some anticipate -- the senior Congress leadership cracks, broadly as between the Nehru-Gandhi loyalists and those who may be termed 'pro-changers',' observes Arun Bhatnagar, a retired IAS officer.
Rashtriya Lok Dal Ajit Singh on Friday attacked the government for rejecting his demand for converting the bungalow occupied by him into a memorial to his father, former Prime Minister Charan Singh, and blamed it for protests over the issue.
At a time when Hyderabad is rocking with Telangana protests, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Hyderabad to kick-start the southern election campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday. Under the banner 'nayi soch nayi umeed'(new thought, new hope), he will address a conclave at the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium in Hyderabad at 4 pm.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is in Hyderabad could term his trip a success even before he commenced his address at the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium.
Amid controversy over destroying of 11,100 files relating to the home ministry, the government on Monday assured the Rajya Sabha that it will not allow tampering or destruction of any link with the country's glorious history.
Former Research and Analysis Wing chief Sanjeev Tripathi on Tuesday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, following the footsteps of several retired bureaucrats and diplomats finding a career in politics.
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