If the spot-fixing scandal in cricket and the revelations around it prove anything, it is that the time has come to legalise betting in India, feels Ayaz Memon.
The 'love jihad" controversy, an issue the Bharatiya Janata Party sought to exploit during the assembly by-elections in western Uttar Pradesh last month, took a new turn with a 22-year-old local woman going back on her statement that she was gang-raped and forcibly converted to Islam.
'We have never had a policy regarding Pakistani artistes working in India.' 'We welcome them with open arms and that remains the official policy of the Indian government, including the current dispensation.'
A Ganesh Nadar meets a community of Rohingya refugees on the outskirts of Chennai who are happy to have found a place where their lives are not in danger.
The underclass voted heavily in favour of AAP, which led to their victory
Jayendra Saraswati, the shankaracharya of Kanchi, discusses the temple entry for women controversy, the Ram Janmabhoomi temple issue and gurus getting into business with Rediff.com's Saisuresh Sivaswamy and A Ganesh Nadar in his first interview since being acquitted recently by a court.
TRPs have a better affinity for Karti Chidambaram and his alleged timely assistance to INX Media, the company Peter and Indrani once ran, than the more recent murder of a 25-year-old woman.
Sarbananda Sonowal was on Tuesday sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Assam in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and other dignitaries at a huge public function at Khanapara field.
'The problem here is not that one community's deity has suddenly become another community's meal.' 'Hindus and Muslims have been peacefully coexisting with their cows for centuries now.' 'The problem here is that a section of Indians has been suddenly made to realise that it makes great political sense to degrade each one of the 170 million Muslims to a potential cow-killer, lynch a few of them to keep the heat on, polarise and win elections.'
One of the two men accused of making hoax calls and demanding money by impersonating Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad was on Friday refused bail by a Delhi court which said there is a likelihood of destroying the evidence if released from jail.
Tainted former Indian Premier League Commissioner Lalit Modi invoked the names of British royalty, including Prince Charles and his brother Andrew, while seeking his travel papers from the United Kingdom home office, according to a media report on Sunday.
'One one hand, the BJP puts Uniform Civil Code as a goal in its manifesto, and on the other, it pushes massive discrimination against Hindus.' 'This is not sabka saath, sabka vikas. Rather it is "Haj ka saath, church ka vikas",' argues Sankrant Sanu.
Given the Indian electoral system, the racecourse totaliser (tote) would be a near-ideal model for election betting.
'The prime minister's advisers might have told him that going along with this AIADMK government will damage his image.'
Much of the pre-2014 peace in our hotspots is diminished. Kashmir is on the boil and the Northeast is anarchic, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'If your paper writes something you don't agree with, will you criticise it?' Nitin Gadkari asks Aditi Phadnis when quizzed about demonetisation.
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The Finance Ministry had set a time period of 18 months, which expired last year on August 21, for completion of the study.
Part of what make Ee.Ma.Yau so special is its ability to focus our attention on things that conventional movies throw away under the pretext of storytelling, says Sreehari Nair.
'I am zapped by what an incredible actor he is.' 'He does his work bindass, but he understands films better than anybody else.'
'Most Assamese don't understand a word like ghuspethiya and its insulting connotation.'
The best of India and the Middle East, now at the Dharamsala Film Festival.
It is mischievous to imply that the proposed bill to grant citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists from other nations implies that Muslims and Christians are not Indians, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
The Governor, who completes one year in RBI on Wednesday, has stabilised the rupee and is getting a fix on inflation.
'Bhagwat, aware of the advantages of keeping the BJP in power, is wary about the RSS taking steps that would undermine the popular standing of either the PM or the party.'
When Rani Hong was just seven, she was taken from her family and sold into slavery. At an age when she should have been enjoying her childhood, she was subjected to treatment that left her close to death.
'N Ram and I met on the lawns of Mani Shankar Aiyar's bungalow.' 'I pulled out a rolled printout from my jacket and handed it to him.' 'In the cut-throat world of journalism, this was like high treason.' 'But letting a story be killed because you can't publish it is a bigger crime than passing it to the competition,' recalls Shekhar Gupta.
The parallels between Modi's direct and indirect methods and his fan base, and those of Trump, are blinding.
The suspension of Durga Shakti Nagpal, a young IAS officer, is likely to be withdrawn by the Uttar Pradesh government as the case has become extremely high-profile.
Three hate crimes have deepened the fear among South Asians that Trump's rhetoric encouraged violence against them, but there is no evidence that Indians have been specifically targeted, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'The BJP must realise that a resurgent Rahul Gandhi will take the battle straight into its camp.' 'He is not going to be held back by the misdeeds of UPA 1 and 2, so there is no point harping on them,' says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Two men alleged to be members of an illegal betting syndicate based in Singapore were charged with conspiracy to defraud on Thursday as part of a match-fixing investigation into English lower league soccer.
While Christians in Ranaghat insist that ghar wapsi was behind the robbery and rape of a nun at a local convent, the West Bengal CID believes a gang of Bangladeshis was behind the robbery and rape.
Several American lawmakers have slammed India for failing to condemn Russia's aggression in Ukraine, Russian rebels' downing of flight MH17 and the annexation of Crimea. The leaders also raised the issue of repeated abuse and violence against minorities and women in India. Aziz Haniffa reports.
The Bombay Hemp Company offers goods fashioned out of hemp, the lesser known cousin of ganja.
B S Prakash takes a tongue-in-cheek look at what India's neighbours think about the proposal of a SAARC satellite.
'The Ishrat encounter was neither genuine, nor fake. I believe it was a 'controlled killing,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'No country has moved from bigotry to equality fast, and India, with its leisurely, elephant-like pace for the most non-controversial of things, will only take longer.'
The Justice Mudgal Committee, appointed to probe the spot-fixing and betting scandal in the sixth edition of Indian Premier League, has cleared Board of Control for Cricket in India president-in-exile Narayanaswami Srinivasan of match-fixing charges and scuttling the investigations that followed the episode. However, it could be temporary relief for him, as he could still find himself in the dock for not taking action against a particular individual, referred to as Individual 3 in the report.
Meet Bengaluru's fondest freedom fighter, HS Doreswamy, who has been a sprightly witness to the country's ups and downs since 1947.
'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?'
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