It also pledged to give interest free crop loan of up to Rs 3 lakh to farmers.
'If majority of the country's population is sentimental about a certain species, why are we so ashamed to say that we want to give it statutory protection?'
'Our government has created 10 million jobs when the Indian unemployment rate is at a 45-year high.'
Climate change, air quality, nutrition, even connectivity are joining the political agenda, and it will force a shift in policies.
Modi government has pledged to lay 700,000 kms of broadband cable.
'Once the prime minister and the chief ministers of Maharashtra and Haryana pushed for this in 2014 and 2015, we have been trapped in a cycle of violence that gives India a bad name around the world,' says Aakar Patel.
Could the Haji Ali dargah verdict be the beginning of the end of all social discrimination -- against women, against Dalits, the low castes and the caste-less, asks Durba Dhyani.
Villagers attribute Adarsh Nangla's 'fall' to a combination of government apathy and decline of the collective spirit
The great Indian election is over and now the wait for the results is shrinking with every passing moment. Though exit polls hint at a cakewalk for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his National Democratic Alliance, there are some battles which will be keenly observed on the result day.
'We have to accept that the infection is now in the community and we can't isolate everyone who gets it.' 'Instead, what we need to do is to find out those who are most at risk of death, isolate them and save them from the rest.'
Sensing defeat, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have launched a new game plan for a fractured mandate in Uttar Pradesh so that they can have bargaining power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday.
Ram V Sutar, 89, has already created more than 200 distinct statues, many of them massive. Now, he is a leading contender for the commission to produce the world's largest statue: A 597-foot tall rendering of Sardar Patel, an independence leader who played a crucial role in uniting India's fractious states.
Two young cyclists have embarked on a cycling tour across India with an aim to support girl child education.
Modi has the ideas for a new, hopeful India, and an idiom in which to sell optimism to voters. But he doesn't yet have the team for it, and soon enough, questions will begin to be asked by an impatient, non-ideological, I-don't-owe-anybody-anything generation of Indian voters, says Shekar Gupta.
Do tomorrow's work today, today's work now. If the moment is lost, when will you get to it?
Pune architects Dhruvang Hingmire and Priyanka Gunjikar are building houses out of mud and stone, employing local artists and contributing to the village economy.
'No other country other than India can do it on this scale.'
Congress is the only other horse in the race for national power, never mind how distant. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah know better than to take the Congress lightly, observes Shekhar Gupta.
"We, Indians have forgotten what is good for us. Foreigners say oats are good so we say the same, arrey, we have oats since ages!" Meet Preeti Virkar, a believer of a different kind.
'Some people petitioned the adhikari (government official) and a electricity pole was unloaded here, but because we were not here at that time, some people from a neighbouring village took it to their village instead.' As Bihar goes to the polls, Rediff.com looks at the state through the stories of its people.
'When George Bush Senior decided in 1992 that India and the United States must start talking in this-now-changed world, who would have thought that 10, 15 years down the road, we will start looking at each other as strategic partners?'
'Muslims are depressed and disillusioned.' 'The safety valve is that we still have a multicultural mosaic in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.'
The farmers of Khentia are now working in tandem with the IIT team.
Job creation was mentioned 13 times in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto, yoga only twice. Has yoga taken precedence over jobs for the Modi Sarkar, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
A G Padmanabhan's dream is to make India a 'no food waste economy' and promote sustainable ideas.
'What will we drink if we start fearing these wells?'
A series of bypoll losses has pushed the Modi government into panic mode. Uncharacteristically, it's letting events dictate its actions, says Shekhar Gupta.
Meet the cleanliness warrior from Nagaland who is cleaning up the holy ghats of Varanasi...
'I had been to a village in Haryana. One woman who had four daughters-in-law and three daughters, told me that she had to be awake the whole night to take each of them, one by one to the fields.' 'I am not saying all rapes are because of lack of toilets. 20 to 30 percent of rape cases happen because of the lack of toilets.' Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, founder, Sulabh International, on how India should go about building toilets for all its people in this exclusive interview with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'The new generation voter is hyper-nationalistic, but it isn't essentially illiberal.' 'They will find the rants of Adityanath as laughable as Irfan Habib's. They will also find the BJP's polarising approach to vote-gathering unacceptable if it fails to deliver jobs and growth,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Narendra Modi's mother washed utensils to make a living. Madhusudan Mistry's grandmother, who brought him up, was a vegetable vendor. Mistry's trajectory from poverty to membership of the all powerful Congress Working Committee is moving. the man who has Rahul Gandhi's ear and is all set to take on Narendra Modi in Vadodara, speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt in a fascinating interview.
