'Our religion had some important philosophies regarding trans people that cannot be ignored.' 'Contemporary India is refusing and ignoring transgender people.'
'The BJP has been wooing him for quite some time.' 'But he didn't join the BJP; he started his own party.' 'Remember he has Hindus, Muslims and Christians as his fans.' 'He will never antagonise any of his fans.'
'We have not seen even during Vajpayee's time what Modi and the BJP has adopted now.'
'It is our aim to capture power and rule in Kerala. We may not be able to achieve our target in one attempt.' 'By just hammering once, you will not be able to break a rock; you need to hammer the rock several times.'
'This government has not created any employment.' 'Forget employment, the government had not done anything in skill development.'
'When you don't have food to eat, will you be worried about the virus or the next meal?'
'The rivers that caused the maximum problem were the ones that had dams built on them.'
'No finance minister has the capacity to put the economy in an ICCU just like no finance minister has the capacity to take it for 10% growth!'
'A lot of unauthorised encroachments have taken place in our forest area.' 'The landslides are partly because of such encroachments.' 'The other factor is deforestation.' 'Protection of forest resources is not on the agenda of any government.' 'The damage caused by the rain in Kerala is a man-made factor.'
'Karna is the greatest warrior in the Mahabharata -- in fact, Arjuna is a nobody in front of Karna.' 'But Arjuna had a better advisor in Krishna than Karna.' 'Karna failed because he listened to the wrong advice given by Salya.' 'It just shows wrong advisors can land even the mighty in trouble.'
'Water is not an economic resource, but we treat water as an economic resource meant for the benefit of human beings.' 'Water is more of a life source than an economic resource.'
'How many people have died in India so far due to Covid?' 'Multiply that by at least four, and that many people in intense grief are there in the country.'
Priya Ramesh, a psychoanalyst and life coach, recounts how she, her husband and neighbours braved the floods by sheltering on the first floor of their villas in Chennai's Sholinganallur suburb.
'When an enemy country is looking for information to sabotage a system from a remote location, they can access your data, they can stop the functioning of our power plants, they can stop the functioning of critical systems in the network.' 'It is very important that we should have full control of everything in the network.' 'Most Indian companies buy from China only because of the kind of incentive they are getting.' 'By doing so, these Indian companies are exposing themselves to dangers in the coming years.'
'We are against Alibaba investing in Paytm.' 'We are against the concessions given to Paytm.' 'In fact, we want Paytm to close down because of its alliance with Alibaba.'
'If you look at the age group of people who died in India, the average age is 35!' 'That's why as a country we should be much more concerned.'
'The moment the BJP loses a state, it announces some policy which never takes off.'
'It is because we treat them as our own people, and there is no difference between owners and workers here.'
'Those days, none of the leaders thought of amassing wealth.' 'All of them wanted to sacrifice their all for the country.' 'There are many who didn't have any money, but sacrificed their lives for the country.' 'There are many who spent their own money and worked for the country.' 'There are many more about whom we do not even know what they had done; they did everything so silently and selflessly.'
'Today, bankers don't want to take risks as the good decisions taken by them were not protected.' 'There is risk involved in all decisions, like businessmen taking risks in their businesses.' 'A banker must have taken a decision when the economic condition was different, and you cannot question him on the basis of the present situation in hindsight.' 'Naturally, this has affected the morale of bankers.'
'We are rolling out a vaccine when we don't even have the phase 2 trial results; forget about phase 3 trial results.' 'Why are we playing with people's lives?'
'We want to be in kids' learning like what Disney is to kids' entertainment.'
Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi of IIT-Madras discusses the disparity between academic vision and industry needs with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'You peel one layer, then another layer, then another, but in the end, you will see that there is no onion inside.' 'This package has been packaged well, but there is nothing much inside the package!'
'What we are going to see is a large number of white collar jobs getting lost.' 'Job loss can drive people to depression, drugs, alcoholism and even suicide as there is no one to turn to when they are down.' 'There is no in-between now -- things go from a luxurious lifestyle to no lifestyle.'
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy tells rediff.com's Shobha Warrier why the UPA lost in the general elections, the decline of the Left and what he expects from the Centre.
'Our case should act as a warning. It is high time change comes to society. This is not the way to treat a woman. I don't want any other woman to have a fate like mine.'
'We are looking at the Budget with the hope that it will address all issues even at the cost of exceeding the fiscal deficit target.'
'The feeling is that Rajinikanth is pro-Modi than anti-Modi.'
Dr Tiju Joseph, a foreign service officer who studied medicine, has set up the first public online blood donors registry in the UAE.
'At the same time, if we are a little careless, we will run into trouble. No doubt about that.'
'The TDP walking out of the NDA is a victory for the YSRCP.' 'The YSRCP wanted it to happen so that it would help them in coming elections.'
'Four weeks have passed after the scam was exposed, yet no big guy has been arrested.' 'This gives the impression that he wants to be soft on the biggies.'
'From the time Rahul Gandhi entered the scene, I started feeling dissatisfied. No true Congressman will be able to agree with the way Rahul Gandhi functioned. He has not attained enough maturity or wisdom.' 'You cannot compare Rahul Gandhi with Narendra Modi. When you take into consideration Modi's political experience and abilities, nobody can think of projecting Rahul Gandhi against him.' 'The main culprits behind such a humiliating defeat are Veerappa Moily and P Chidambaram. It was Moily who did the maximum damage to people and the party.' T H Mustafa, one of the first Congress leaders to criticise Rahul Gandhi, speaks out in this interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'I will be happy if walls are built between India and China!' 'We are going to nooks and corners of the country to make ordinary people realise the need to buy Indian goods so that our workers get jobs.'
'The UPA's claim of growth at 9.5 percent was absolute nonsense and a fraudulent claim because the country did not grow; it was only statistical growth.' 'I do believe that when there is a determined leader who wants to bring a desired change, the system will begin acting. Today, people think there is policy paralysis, but there is functional paralysis also.' 'When things start moving, people will invest. Many companies are holding cash, many people are not investing. Nobody is making any move. Everybody is waiting for the elections to get over.' Economist and Swadeshi Jagran Manch convenor Swaminathan Gurumurthy in conversation with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'Our technology is going to help Indian agriculture the way the White Revolution helped milk production.'
'When Arnab Goswami's arrest became a talking point, the case of my husband who was arrested much earlier, was totally ignored.' 'When so many people spoke in support of Goswami, they were silent on a journalist named Siddique Kappan'
B K Tyagi, director of the Madurai-based Centre for Research in Medical Entomology, talks with Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier about how dengue fever can be controlled.
'The IAS officers are after the rich people, the IRS officers are after the middle class and the IPS officers are after the poor. This is the new varnashrama created by the bureaucracy.'
