'The IB and authorities knew I had given away all my property and had nothing in my name.' 'Even among police officers, they all respected me for this sacrifice which is rare these days.' 'They respected me from this point of view -- in this day and age few individuals live by ideals for the poor.'
The ISI was taking no chances and wanted no repeat of Pulwama; it wanted to make it clear at a political level it was not involved with the revenge attack being planned, but was only giving India a friendly tip-off. A stunning excerpt from Ambassador Ajay Bisaria's Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan.
Indian-American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee's acclaimed book on cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, has won the prestigious 2011 Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category. According to the Pulitzer citation, the book by the New York-based cancer physician and researcher is "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science".
Officials in the railway ministry are discussing a proposal by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee to cut the premium on Tatkal (instant) tickets and reduce its booking period to give the railway budget an aam aadmi touch.
West Bengal Governor Dr CV Ananda Bose on Friday said that political violence in the state must come to an end, after visiting Bhangore, where supporters of two political parties clashed a day before leaving three dead.
'I somehow felt that Muzaffar Ali was in Aligarh to feel the pulse of the Muslim youth, especially in the darker and harsher times that India is passing through,' notes Mohammad Sajjad.
At this year's TIME ball in New York City on Thursday, April 25, you would have run into a Coimbatore-born American scientist, looking lovely in Sabyasachi Mukherjee designer finery, who would most likely have been hanging out with Dua Lipa.
The Reserve Bank (RBI) resisted a 'raid' planned by some in the government to extract Rs 2-3 lakh crore from its balance sheet in 2018 to meet populist spending in run-up to general elections, Viral Acharya, who was deputy governor at RBI at that time, has written.
Following their meeting with Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, the protesting wrestlers have agreed to suspend their protest for a week.
Former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia was booked for sedition over her alleged "slanderous comments" concerning martyrs of the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Abhishek Mande Bhot is convinced he has not seen such a huge book launch in Mumbai ever.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday released its manifesto for the November 17 Madhya Pradesh elections promising MSP for wheat at Rs 2,700 per quintal and paddy at Rs 3,100 and houses for beneficiaries of the state's flagship scheme 'Ladli Bahna'.
Pranab's earlier fear of Sonia relying too heavily on a coterie due to her lack of experience turned out to be unfounded. As per Pranab, Sonia had her close advisers but she did not follow anyone's advice blindly. A fascinating excerpt from Sharmistha Mukherjee's Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers.
Abhay Chautala said that Banerjee has told him that she had some preoccupation on that day and she will depute a senior leader of her party for the event while Thackeray told him that if he is unable to attend due to some reasons he will send a senior leader for the event.
'Till today, we don't know what PM Modi discussed with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, but we have been told that the relations have been reset.' 'We have no evidence from China to show that anything has changed, even though India had made several gestures in preparation for Wuhan,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'Until the situation changes, I expect Washington to continue to behave the same way.'
Valhalla is undoubtedly enriched by the presence of Unnikrishnan Gangadharan Kartha. He would have already convened the 'fall in' and regaled his friends with tales of the distant land that they once inhabited.
Anecdotes and laughter peppered the launch of Renu Kurien Balakrishnan debut novel, Four Aleys.
'Just the amount of work which is there just to become more and more successful in banking. For this to happen you need to have leaders who understand technology.'
Indian politics, held captive in one way or the other by Ayodhya, may now well seek its emancipation from this issue, and the pursuit of welfare, asserts Congress leader Salman Khurshid in this excerpt from his latest book, Sunrise over Ayodhya.
"We will raise Rs 300 crore via bonds of two-, three- and five-year tenures. This will be our maiden bond issuance and is part of our effort to widen funding sources," says Vimal Bhandari, executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), Arka Fincap. The firm, a subsidiary of Kirloskar Oil, is only five years old and small (assets of around Rs 5,000 crore with an "AA" rating), but the response to this float will be closely watched: It would be the first by a non-banking finance company (NBFC) after Mint Road upped the risk weights on bank exposures to them by 25 percentage points. The move by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has caught NBFCs off guard even though the issue had been flagged by Governor Shaktikanta Das with their corner-room occupants (and that of banks) in July and August 2023 - on consumer credit and the dependency on bank borrowings.
BlackRock has again reduced the valuation of its share in edtech firm Byju's - this time to about $1 billion, TechCrunch reported on Friday, citing disclosures made by the US-based asset manager. This is 95 per cent less than its peak valuation of $22 billion in 2022. The markdown comes at a time when the company is facing a multitude of challenges, including securing fresh capital, delays in financial reporting and legal disputes with lenders.
The six-nation Asia Cup, which will be played in a 50-over format in the first part of September this year, has grouped India and Pakistan together with a qualifier. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are part of the other group.
These are some of the controversial but interesting questions the late Alyque Padamsee has raised in his last book, Let Me Hijack Your Mind.
Those who continue to think that the 2024 election will see the BJP pursuing a more militant line are being alarmist, argues Rajeev Mantri. The BJP, Mantri believes, is not about to shoot itself in the foot. If anything, he says, the BJP may be more inclined to push a harder secularism.
A revealing excerpt from Rahul Shivshankar and Siddhartha Talya's book, Modi & India: 2024 and the Battle for Bharat.
'When I was toying with 10 different ideas, my father was diagnosed with lung fibrosis and his condition deteriorated so badly that we lost him in six months. He was very unsatisfied with the lack of proper diagnosis.' 'It made me think will anyone do a biopsy if there is no symptom? Why is it that we do not have any non-invasive diagnostic method?' 'This idea was the strongest out of the ten, and with Snahlata Singh with her cancer biology background joining me, the idea got a real boost.'
'We will bring up students with an imperfect understanding of their own history and a superficial understanding of science.' 'This is not what we should be doing to future generations.'
The gau rakshak stated that the famine-stricken people were suffering because of their past karma and nothing could be done for them. The reply apparently infuriated Vivekananda, who told the gau rakshak bluntly that he had no sympathy to spare for societies which would not lift a finger to help human beings but wasted piles of food on birds and beasts. A fascinating excerpt from Govind Krishnan V's book, Vivekananda The Philosopher of Freedom.
'When the mill strike started, there was crisis in every mill worker household.' 'One entire generation went without education.' 'Hunger forced them to take to crime.'
"Never gatecrashed in my life... I am not a gatecrasher and would never be one," Mallya tweeted on Sunday, responding to the claims that he was not among the invitees.
India's largest edtech firm Byju's will fire 1,000 employees in a fresh round of layoffs across departments. With the latest round, total job cuts at the company have mounted to around 3,500. According to sources, fresh job cuts are an attempt by the company to improve its finances and work towards a path to profitability.
Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Thursday rejected allegations that her ministry was trying to push books written by Hindutva ideologues, saying it will abide by "constitutional modalities" before taking any step.
'The idea of subversive activities is so vague that it could include making fun of the government, being critical of the government.'
Miss World 2024 will be crowned in India soon. Long before Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra, Yukta Mukhey and Diana Hayden, a beautiful woman from Bombay was crowned Miss World. In 1966. Reita Faria was India's first Miss World. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/ Rediff.com met the 80 year old in Dublin recently, still as elegant, still as attractive as she was all those years ago.
'In his 2014 election campaign, Mr Modi had boasted that he would apply the Gujarat model to the rest of India. We just have to ensure he doesn't start with Parliament,' says Shashi Tharoor in this fascinating excerpt from his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India.
The government will "play by the rule book" and make sure that absolute standards of probity are maintained, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said as the Opposition continued its attack over the Lalit Modi controversy.
Citing the neighbouring country's support to terrorism as the reason behind the opposition, the party warned that the function will be disrupted if not cancelled.
There is, between Rao's tenure as PM and the current Modi regime, a powerful resonance of how transition can be managed. Rao's tenure saw many scams -- one where he was supposedly approached by Harshad Mehta with a bribe for making the securities scam go away. The Opposition insisted on a JPC. Despite knowing a JPC report would undermine him politically, Rao agreed to one, saying he had 'nothing to hide'.
Maruti Suzuki is set to launch a new multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) -- Invicto -- next month. It will be the company's first passenger vehicle with an ex-showroom price tag of Rs 20 lakh or more, said Shashank Srivastava, executive director (sales), on Tuesday. The upcoming MPV will compete with the likes of Toyota Innova Hycross, Kia Carnival, Hyundai Alcazar, MG Hector Plus, Tata Safari, Mahindra & Mahindra XUV700, and Mahindra & Mahindra Scorpio-N - all having three rows of seats. Invicto will be based on the Hycross by Toyota, which will manufacture Maruti's most expensive car at its Bidadi plant in Karnataka.
'There was trust, but perhaps there was also this apprehension that given the supreme post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi felt her authority may be a challenged.'
