'I am doing all this for the students of Kerala, and when they come and hit me, it is very frustrating.' 'My regret is that something that could set off for the future has been thwarted.' 'We have not changed the syllabus for decades, we have not accepted norms in education and technology is hardly used. Today's students are studying what I studied decades ago.'
'With folded hands, on humanitarian grounds, if she can get temporary bail on medical grounds so she can get treatment.' 'If she dies, the whole trial gets derailed.'
The 67-year-old hasn't only received a clear-cut mandate for an unprecedented fourth term but also done it on his own. From distributing tickets to planning party campaigns to chalking out strategies for the present and the future, the chief minister had played a stellar role throughout, and emerged successful in his endeavour. Bikash Mohapatra reports
'Modi's idea of India is to make it less liberal, less tolerant and a less accommodative of diversity.' 'We are headed, if Modi continues, to become an ill liberal democracy.' 'Modi is not Vajpayee. Vajpayee was fundamentally decent, tolerant and fair. He played by the rules of the game. Modi is a different story.'
Our generation got independence too easy, we take our freedom too lightly, we treat our country and environment like toilet paper and take the easy way out because we have no sense of pride or self worth except when it is an India-Pakistan match. We need to be broken more so that we may rise, says film director Suparn Verma.
Sunday's results may be a bitter pill that the Congress has to swallow -- that its future cannot be hitched to Rahul unless he can resonate with the people, feels Saroj Nagi.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh interacts with readers on Rediff Chat as he discusses the period that changed India's history, forever.
Since the Saradha group of companies went bust with its owner Sudipta Sen in police custody from 2013, its agents have been left penniless, homeless and have lost all hope of living a peaceful life. They are out on the streets, crying themselves hoarse for compensation. One of them writes an open letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for help.
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Shashi Tharoor has publicised whatever little he has done, far more than what he has actually done. Some of the bigger promises he made could never be implemented.' Ajit Joy, a former police officer and Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Thiruvananthapuram, tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier that he is a more attractive candidate in his constituency than sitting MP Tharoor.
There is quiet a bit of history behind NCP chief Sharad Pawar's recent outburst about the Maharashtra chief minister, says Neeta Kolhatkar
'Modi's more than dozen interviews are helping him fine-tune the rough edges of his campaign. He is trying to influence floating voters, undecided voters, non-committal and caste-neutral voters into deciding whether to go for the Lotus or not. These could have been Congress voters, but its divided house, torn between the old guard and Rahul Gandhi, seems to have got completely confused.' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt lists what the Congress did wrong to find itself in such a sorry mess today.
A common factor that binds all these men is greed.
'The Congress is unsure of emerging as the single largest party or group on May 16. In such a scenario, they do not wish to accord a loser tag to the young Gandhi... The Congress feels Rahul's projection as a prime ministerial nominee in 2014 would come in the way of the formation of an alternative, non-BJP government...' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt explains how the transition of power within the Congress is making the party vulnerable.
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to allow us to project his real personality to let the people of India know exactly what he really was. He was always shying away from greater public exposure. Since the last two years we have seen enormous criticism, ridiculing the prime minister. He has been made into an object of jokes. It certainly hurts. I think this man deserves lots of good reviews... His contribution to social policy, his contribution to the economy, his contribution to coalition management, his contribution to foreign policy.' Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Singh's former media advisor who is in the eye of a storm over his book on the prime minister UPA speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
Though there is a full-throated clamour in the Congress that party vice-president Rahul Gandhi be formally named as its prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Nehru-Gandhi scion is personally not convinced that his projection will yield electoral dividends.
The IPL has produced more controversies in its short lifespan than any other sporting league in history.
Despite the recent electoral reverses, Rahul is getting ready to walk the fire once more. The question is whether he will get burned or burnished in the process, says Saroj Nagi.
Don't forget to make your pick for the newsmaker of 2015.
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
Bogged down by inefficient administration and unable to attract financing, the once legendary football clubs of Kolkata are fading into irrelevance.
You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people, Bahukutumbi Raghavan tells Sheela Bhatt
Who are the men the prime minister relies on to execute his impressive agenda?
'After the 2002 riots when the media and other political parties started blaming Modiji, thousands of people like us -- now, it must be crores of us -- started becoming staunch supporters of Modiji. The more you blamed him the more of our support he gained.' Pramod Singh of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh is one of Narendra Modi's biggest fans and a member of Modi's India272 Web initiative, spreading the leader's message on social media and the Internet.
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
