'The Himalayas are the Creator of Life.'
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'.
Dr Ramakant Panda performed bypass heart surgery on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2009, shortly before the general election. As the Asian Heart Institute, which Dr Panda built from scratch in Mumbai, completes 200,000 heart treatments, Dr Panda tells Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore about the prime minister's current state of health.
By speaking for all nations without going into details, India expressed its confidence that it cannot be excluded if the Council is expanded. This was more effective than the usual assertion of the Indian claim on every occasion, says T P Sreenivasan.
Indrani dressed in a short purple kurta and leggings, with a bandhini green-purple chunni, sindhoor glowing in her mang, was receiving a drubbing from her lawyers for the facts she had revealed before the court on Tuesday while arguing the rejoinder to her bail application. She was insisting: "But he asked me for a motive!"
Abe Shinzo's murder is a personal loss for Prime Minister N D Modi, one of the Japanese leader's international friends -- Modi was the only world leader Abe followed on social media back in 2014 -- and the two prime ministers charted out a new road map for India-Japan relations that grew stronger in the Abe era and in the years since he stepped down.
Several Congress leaders interpreted it as a dig at Prime Minister Modi who is yet to address a single press conference in his 54-month tenure.
'While it may not be an out-and-out hit job on the Gandhi family, the movie is all about one aspect: How Dr Singh struggled with the family and the party all through his prime ministership,' notes Utkarsh Mishra.
Chastened by the Kargil conflict, Pervez Musharraf will be remembered for gradually lowering the profile of terrorism and seeking a realistically negotiated settlement to the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, notes Ambassador G Parthasarathy, who served as India's high commissioner to Pakistan when Musharraf seized power in a coup in October 1999.
'The prowess with which they executed the shootings unmistakably bear the imprint of someone who has had professional training.'
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Three-quarters into the 10 years that Mr Modi had sought for transforming India, the 'output' numbers look impressive, but the key 'outcome' numbers don't show up much, if at all, observes T N Ninan.
'Farmers must get Maximum Support Price instead of Minimum Support Price.'
'An earthquake of a slightly higher magnitude in the Western Himalayan region is going to be catastrophic -- not just because of the fragility of the region but because of how densely we have occupied it.'
'The decision to supply free food grains is not an economically sound decision because the government will find it very difficult in future to charge anything for food grains.'
Seven years after Modi took office, merchandise exports were lower in 2020-2021 than when he had taken over from Manmohan Singh, points out Aakar Patel.
Pranab Mukherjee's stewardship of the economy will stand out as much for the manner in which he managed controversies as for creating quite a few of them, says A K Bhattacharya.
'The Bharat Jodo Yatra has done very well in the south, and if they are able to pull voters in the south and rely on their allies in the north like in Bihar, UP and do well in Rajasthan, then there are chances that there might be a formidable opposition or at least a force to fight the BJP.'
A bit of economic reforms stalled and decisions delayed -- what Narayana Murthy spoke of -- don't hurt if a country's compassionate and inclusive social fabric has survived intact; if the country is happy, observes Shyam G Menon.
'The biggest problem that faces the Opposition in Gujarat is just a day or two before voting is scheduled, Modiji goes on a spree of emotional appeals.' 'That process has been set in motion much earlier this time in Gujarat.'
Say hello to the cast of The Accidental Prime Minister.
'People have a certain perception about my political leanings -- and rightly so.' 'But I am an actor first, and then an activist.' 'And I am not an accidental actor.' 'There was no way I was going to be dishonest with my acting,' Anupam Kher tells Veenu Sandhu.
Will DMK send former PM to the Rajya Sabha next month?
'The PM of India was 20 km away from the Pakistan border and he is one of the persons under extreme threat from that country and they put his life in danger.'
Union Ministers Jitendra Singh and Hansraj Ahir assure Mehbooba Mufti of the Centre's support.
Donald Trump becomes the first American president to visit India with his wife and daughter and son-in-law in tow
The message for 2024 is that the man on the street is not going to be euphoric if the G-20 crowns Modi as king-emperor for 2023, or if India sends its first man to space just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Even a 'temple consecration' in Ayodhya, or a Uniform Civil Code, or both of them together, may not have enough electoral purchase if fuel and commodity prices are not rolled back, and money-in-the-pocket does not fatten, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'With running water our two hands play, In and out the colourful soap dances away! It bubbles and froths between our fingers Under our nails it cleans and lingers Then all the soap we wash away!'
Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
'We will need more than 21 days of lockdown for sure.'
'If things don't work on the ground and they continue moving at this pace, it will vanish.'
Paswan was a minister under six different prime ministers, hardly out of government since he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh resigned on Saturday, capping a 10-year tenure of two UPA governments that have been brought to an end by a shattering defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.
"Despite huge and multiple challenges, India has been demonstrating unwavering commitment in its fight against the pandemic," said WHO's South-East Asia Regional Director, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh.
'Congress leaders don't believe in themselves and in the potential of the party.' 'Unless they have faith in themselves, only then will the public have faith in them.'
In the mid-1980s, India and the US struggled to arrive at sufficient confidence for Washington to even sell a supercomputer to India for monsoon prospecting. Now, the most sensitive military technologies, data, and intelligence resources are being shared. This would not have happened without that one, big deal that changed the fundamentals of India-US relations, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'The Modi government, like the Singh one, has run into what is called a perfect storm, where everything that can go wrong does so at the same time,' points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Let Modi not be in the news, I will stop making cartoons on him.'
A quick scan of prime ministerial speeches at the PBD going back to 2009, another election year, reveals no political utterances by either Modi or his predecessor, Dr Manmohan Singh.
Nothing 'accidental' about this movie, feels Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
