'I told myself, I will be 23 next year. Why can't I be a billionaire too?'
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
'This government has huge respect for the Supreme Court and when there is going to be a hearing on the review petition, it is appropriate to refrain from taking any action till then.'
'We need to prove to the world that quality vaccines and R&D are possible in India.'
''None of the existing vaccines have 100% efficacy.' 'Each vaccine will work openly on a certain percentage of the population.'
'I didn't want the biopic on Swami Chinmayananda to be a propaganda film,' filmmaker R S Prasanna tells Shobha Warrier/ Rediff.com
'The common belief in political circles is that if you provide reservation to somebody, s/he will automatically come up.' 'This is a very faulty understanding.'
'The skills and abilities of civil servants are still respected, even though they become whipping boys when things go wrong.'
'My joining the BJP will definitely result in a landslide migration of votes to the BJP.'
'They suck talent and dump elsewhere,' says ZohO founder Sridhar Vembu.
'These people want to create fissures among the Hindus and they have been trying to do this for quite sometime.'
In these dark, divisive times, Ajitha's humanity gives us cause for hope.
'We used to enjoy looking at the serene Periyar river every day, flowing quietly and calmly.' 'How everything changed in a day!' 'The quiet Periyar became angry, aggressive, ferocious terrifying everyone in its way.' 'I have not seen this kind of rain fury in my entire life.'
'Whatever good he did, all his achievements were overshadowed by the perception of corruption and other things.'
'Unless Modi uses his power to make people work, he will not succeed. He may cry hoarse but he will not succeed.' V Kalyanam, Mahatma Gandhi's personal secretary, tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com why Modi's Clean India campaign won't succeed easily.
'In 1981 when I had a project in Qatar, those in charge told me they would not like Indians in high positions; they felt Indians could work only as drivers, cleaners and labourers.' 'I challenged them and showed that Indians could do great work in all areas.' 'Today, in the Middle East, they insist on having Indians in all fields. Everybody believes Indians are capable, hard working and trustworthy,' Ravi Pillai, one of the most influential businessmen in the Middle East, tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'If the missing people really had any contact with IS, it would be dangerous.' 'Majority of Muslims do not approve of this.'
'What steps have the higher level of political leadership taken to remove corruption from the system and bring in honest governance?'
'The August phenomenon of decline in sales occurs every year.' 'What they have done cleverly is, using the economic slowdown as an excuse, they want a package from the government to compensate the expenditure they will incur while converting BS4 to BS6.' 'That's why they are making a hue and cry.'
'When I realised that I was to take the pictures of Pandit Nehru, I was very nervous and scared.'
'There will only be an institutional solution between the board and the founders to take Infosys forward.'
Meet Sabriye Tenberken, a German woman who is changing lives in India.
'There is a vision in the Budget, and the vision is to take India from a largely agrarian, rural economy into a fast-track digitalised economy.'
'When the country is jobless, why should I pay through my nose to feed these people who want some perks in office?' 'Let them also join India's unemployed.' 'Let them also taste the bitter medicine of being jobless.'
'An actor should learn to separate the actor and the character.' 'Me the actor and me the character should never intermingle.'
'... in the form of possible payments to MLAs and horse-trading for the BJP to win.'
'From March 2020 to November 2021, the combined wealth of the billionaires of this country has doubled.'
'I am a vegetarian and nobody can force me to eat meat.' 'It is my personal right to decide what I eat.' 'Similarly, telling a person who eats non-vegetarian food not to eat beef is a human rights violation.'
'He is a busy man these days, still, he makes it a point to call me at least once a month.'
'There is no tried and true recipe for creating Silicon Valleys.' 'Attracting and creating a mass of truly dynamic entrepreneurs is at the core and among the hardest and most necessary ingredients.' 'In the US, close to 60% of the top valued tech companies were started by immigrants who found the start-up climate to be superior to where they came from.' 'India would clearly benefit from attracting back its talented Diaspora, but it also needs to hold onto those entrepreneurs.'
'The CPI-M workers first destroy houses of our people and then kill them.' 'There is anarchy in Kannur.'
'The leaders of the two parties, the rank and file, and even their respective vote banks are passionately opposed to each other.' 'At the top, between the leaders, it is personal, bitter and hostile.' 'This was not going to work. Everyone knew it.'
'There is good indication that the economy is bouncing back, but the problem is, we should look at the eight quarters preceding March 2020.' 'The growth had fallen below 3.1% before March 2020.' 'So, the governments must realise that even if you transform the best of green shoots into banyan trees, you see only 3.1% growth.'
'When you have a committee, there will not be any autocracy.' 'It means one person cannot take any decision on the temple.'
'Even with 3 lakh cases a day, we have saturated our resources.' 'It is scary to even think what will happen when the number doubles.'
'The propagation of an absolutist narrative that shuts down any dissent is dangerous, irresponsible, and unbecoming of India's proud democracy.' 'The government must do better.'
'People ask me from where I get the strength to fight this battle. I really do not know.' 'Perhaps God is giving me the strength as I am fighting for truth.'
The biggest achievement of the Modi government in the past one year was it could bring positivity in the minds of people and industry, says V P Nandakumar, executive chairman of the Manappuram Finance Ltd, in an interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'Here is a woman who has got widespread appreciation for her work.' 'Social media was full of posts wanting her as the chief ministerial candidate.' 'This kind of popularity did not go well within the party.' 'See, today the party is Pinarayi Vijayan!'
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