'Gau rakshaks portray themselves to be bigger than the chief minister and Prime Minister Modi.' 'We have lost business of Rs 4,000 crore in UP alone since the BJP manifesto was released.'
'If anyone is able to understand the importance of Modi's endeavours to revive the economy -- even against opposition from sections of his own saffron brotherhood -- it is the former prime minister,' says Amulya Ganguli.
As many as 75 million households that do not have access to banking services will be covered and at least one bank account opened for each household, against the earlier proposal of two.
Akbar is rumoured to have once asked the navratnas of his court what the greatest pleasure in the world was. The stock answers came back: wealth, power, women, food, wine and so on, with the emperor's own contribution being hunting. Birbal was the outlier; he asserted that the greatest pleasure in the world was surely a good bowel movement.
Nine young men killed in police firing last August have become symbols of oppression of the tribals of Manipur.
The issue at the core of it is the perceived fear among the locals of getting outnumbered and uprooted by 'others' and eventually losing their identity
The greatest progress on civil rights in the United States since Abraham Lincoln was under the Southern Democrat Lyndon Johnson, the past master of wheeling and dealing in Congress.
India's neglect of villages shows up in many other ways.
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
Poor land-use planning, indiscriminate approvals of building plans and the absence of disaster-risk assessment in urban design have resulted in what experts term concentrated concretization, predisposing cities to disaster risks
'This is India, bhai. This kind of country does not exist anywhere in the world.'
The Opposition on Monday charged the government with trying to promote crony capitalism, creating fear by giving "unbridled power" to taxmen, trying to snoop into people's lives through increased use of Aadhaar through the provisions of the Finance Bill.
The church bells don't toll in Churachandpur any more. The hill district in Manipur has been in mourning for more than a year.
'He is just a 22 year old who has no knowledge of India's laws or Constitution. How will such a man handle a discussion on reservations in an intelligent, lawful manner?' 'Let me alert everybody that he is using the 1985 formula. Back then they opposed reservations based on caste for OBCs and now they want to be included in the same category. This clearly tells us what their intention is. They don't want reservations; they want reservations to be cancelled altogether.'
Sarpanch leaders are changing Rajasthan for the girl child, says Rashme Sehgal.
The main culprit in vitiating the inter community/caste/class relations has been the so called 'targeted' approach. This is nothing but discrimination on the basis of faith/caste/class. When an equally poor and deprived child is denied scholarship, despite equal merit, resentment begins to brew, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
Glaring contrasts in various spheres in this Nehru-Gandhi family pocketborough are being raised by the rivals to target Congress President Sonia Gandhi for lop-sided development in the constituency from where she is seeking a fourth term.
'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.
With nearly a million identified slums, UP urgently requires housing for the poor
Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in mankind's history has such an idea taken the concrete shape in form of a law. The National Food Security Bill, which will come via ordinance and not after the debate in Parliament, is an incredible economic tool to tackle the hunger of poor Indians. Also, it has already been condemned widely as a political gimmick.
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
With facts and figures, the CAG report has highlighted how Gujarat was far from a role model for states across India, and that the progress made in this province in western India in improving agriculture, education, healthcare and empowerment of women and children, was not exactly creditable, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
'Communalism and communal riots happened in India only during and due to colonialism. Pre-colonial India didn't have this problem of communal conflicts and religious strife.'
'Will 'Make in India' be able to harness the demographic dividend so it does not become a disaster?' 'Will 'Digital India' live up to the lofty promises the government and private sector made as part of its recent launch?'