About 17 lakh investors, mostly in West Bengal, who have lost crores of rupees in the Saradha chit fund scam are fast losing hope. The scandal continues to roil West Bengal political circles with several ruling Trinamool Congress leaders being implicated and some arrested. Even West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's name has been dragged into the sordid mess. Indrani Roy presents a FAQ on what the scam is about and the main players behind it.
'It would not be incorrect to say that the Chinese-Pakistani strategy of containing India began in the aftermath of the 1965 war.'
Fiscal discipline has been maintained but toxic assets worth Rs 7 crore are a massive headache
Investigators were on Sunday examining a flight simulator found at the home of a pilot of the missing Malaysian plane with 239 people on board, as they refocused on "those in the cockpit" who knew how to avoid detection by radars.
'As China rises and India grows to reclaim their earlier positions on the world stage as two of the largest economies and most important countries, there will indeed be some contention between these two powers.' 'There will also be plenty of space and room for cooperation amongst the two of us.' 'As our economic size increases to match the fact that we are the two most populous nations on earth, it will be all the more important for us to keep the interests of our peoples as well as those of the rest of the world in mind.' 'We shall have to grow together rather than as separate and disparate entities,' points out Ambassador Gautam Bambawale -- who served as India's ambassador to China -- in the 7th annual lecture of the Indian Association of Foreign Affairs Correspondents on March 1, 2019.
'In Assam we have lost 2,358 sq km to erosion by the Brahmaputra river! Do you know how much area is 2,358 sq km is? This is four times the size of Bombay. But who is concerned?' 'Didn't the BJP say that as soon as we come to power the Bangladeshis will have to pack their bags? Go to Google and search for 'Modi + Bangladeshi' and see exactly the statement he made... I am asking what has happened to it.'
A sensational interview on India-China ties, with the man most qualified to answer.
PM Modi seems to be gradually ending India's strategic ambiguity
'Muslims are depressed and disillusioned.' 'The safety valve is that we still have a multicultural mosaic in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.'
'Pakistan's recent utterances and tendency to use pinpricks to try our patience appear reminiscent of 1965. We are a strong nation, emerging stronger,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'India and China have to make concrete progress with regard to the border issue, addressing the trade deficit, and facilitating people-to-people interactions. This has to happen in the next two, three years.' China expert Tansen Sen tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com how India and China can take their relations to the next level.
An inspired performance from Douglas Costa helped Brazil to a 3-0 win over Peru on Tuesday and lifted them into third place in the South American qualifying group for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Eight states and Union Territories have Muslim share of population in excess of national average of 13 per cent. Mayank Mishra report
Nathuram Godse's nephew and niece in Pune see him as a devout nationalist, not a contract killer.
'The incidents have remained confined to the paramilitary forces on both sides with both the armies scrupulously avoiding getting involved. While this incident has been going on, the LOC has been reasonably quiet. Cross border firing achieves no tactical or strategic aims and is more a symptom of hostility. Unfortunately, India has to learn to live with this. Like Israel, we must construct shelters for the border populations and be ready to retaliate in kind,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'Naik is an outcome of an image-centric Islam, which is linked to the technological changes introduced by new media.' 'English educated upper middle class Muslims embraced Naik's image-centric Islam in the 1990s.' 'Television converted him into a religious object.'
'A P Venkateswaran left an indelible impression on Indian diplomacy and made an incredible number of friends, who kept remembering him, more than other Indian diplomats, who served at those posts.' Ambassador T P Sreenivasan salutes a legend of the Indian Foreign Service who passed into the ages.
'Vietnam has become an adjective as well as a verb -- the Americans, for instance, were driven by the passion to do a 'Vietnam' on the Soviet Union when that country invaded Afghanistan in 1979.'
'All this talk of 'tactical nuclear weapons' or a limited nuclear war are 'false flags'! It looks like India and Pakistan are slowly but surely inching towards this realism,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
In a frontal attack on the Narendra Modi government, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said there has been an "alarming increase" in communal incidents since it came to power and asked party men to resist its "authoritarian and sectarian" tendencies.
A new report says Indian jihadis, including the Indian Mujahideen, are significantly more lethal as a result of external support, primarily from Pakistan. Aziz Haniffa reports.
'One lesson to emerge out of the Modi-Putin summit is that India can be more self-confident that it possesses inherent strengths to leverage its interlocutors to influence Pakistani policies,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Excerpts from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the Combined Commanders Conference on board the INS Vikramaditya at sea, off the coast of Kochi.
'One big problem for the RSS is, while they spread their ideology of hard, Hindu-ised Indian nationalism, the absence of their own pantheon of modern nationalist giants. They missed out on the freedom movement quite comprehensively, in some ways comparable to the Muslim League and latter-day Communists. They have to find heroes elsewhere.' 'They borrow who they can from the Congress, like Madan Mohan Malviya and Sardar Patel, and then steal the entire lot of revolutionaries, from Bhagat Singh to Netaji, never mind that many of them were extreme leftists.'
The 17th Asian Games came to a close on Saturday, bringing an end to two weeks of intense competition, drama and controversy that shone a light on the best and worst of a region that will host the world's biggest events for the next decade.
Here are some of the most stunning moments of the week that was.
Cigarette companies have substantial wriggle room thanks to India's complex tax structure, which categorises them by length and filter
Arvind Subramanian talks about US and China's power play and where India figures in these dynamics.
'The present government's greatest weakness is its intolerance. Tolerance is the key tenet of democracy. How can any government stop someone from speaking one's mind?'
In the first part of an exclusive interview with Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com on the eve of the first year of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, BJP President Amit Shah talks about the government's achievements and the controversy over the land ordinance.
'If India employed a strategy of a 'thousand cuts', Pakistan will wither away.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently completed one year in office, has, in an exclusive interview with Smita Prakash, editor, ANI, said the opposition alleging that his government is a "suit boot ki sarkar" is definitely better and more acceptable than being labelled a "suitcase" (ki sarkar), and satirically added, that after ruling for sixty years, the Congress has suddenly remembered the poor.
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
BCCI's decision to not send Indian teams for the Asian Games drew sharp criticism from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) on Saturday, which accused the influential cricket board of treating the sport just as a business venture.
Since 2004 the Congress has hung onto power in a situation in which it was on track to be out of power. In each case, it effectively gamed the system through Constitutional coups, argues columnist Rajeev Srinivasan.
'They do not want us to construct roads or to conduct health camps. I see no logic in their demands,' says West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
'Both nations have a common problem: A rampaging, jingoistic and hostile China which is making substantial territorial claims. In the long run, Japan and India are going to be the victims of Chinese aggression -- so they might as well hang together to contain China,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
India'sstartups have a good beginning but will they survive competition is a big questions which needs immediate attention.
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy,' says Khushwant Singh.
'We are two countries that, as Swami Vivekananda said in Chicago more than a century ago, have sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations on Earth.' 'People are watching to wait and see if this Modi moment is going to be the moment when the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy finally capitalise on the full, inherent potential of this relationship.' Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from the State Department's lunch for Prime Minister Modi.
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