Driven by hardship, adventurous souls mortgage their homesteads in Punjab or Haryana, pawn the family jewellery and borrow heavily to satisfy the greed of the criminal traffickers who organise their trips, points out Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
But their trajectory and direction have been largely influenced by politics and the political leadership's understanding of how the economy needs to be managed, explains A K Bhattacharya.
YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy has proved that he was the real heir to the political legacy of his father late Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.
The government on Thursday said there were no records of calls made by home ministry officials before the exit of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson from India in December, 1984 and on the 'safe passage' assurance reportedly given to him. A day after Congress leader Arjun Singh sought to point fingers at P V Narasimha Rao for the exit of Anderson, an accused in the Bhopal gas disaster case, Home Minister P Chidambaram also gave a clean chit to Rajiv Gandhi.
Congress leader Arjun Singh finally broke his silence over the Bhopal gas tragedy on Wednesday during a rare appearance in the Rajya Sabha. The septuagenarian leader, who was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, arrived in a wheel chair soon after Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad initiated a discussion on the issue. "I felt that Union Carbide CEO) Warren Anderson should be arrested," he said.
'Parties which supported me were all threatened. This could hardly have been called a fair election.' 'This is Modi's India.'
At a function to commemorate the 125th Foundation Day of the Congress, party president Sonia Gandhi paid glowing tributes to former premiers Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, but made no reference to P V Narasimha Rao, who was prime minister between 1991 and 1996.Gandhi sought to give credit to Rajiv Gandhi for the economic liberalisation in the Narsimha Rao regime when Manmohan Singh was the finance minister.
The flyover was built over a period of about three years at a cost of Rs 600 crore.
Though religion is no longer the hot topic, the government should be on its guard
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Gadkari on Friday said his party was not against Electronic Voting Machines or the use of technology in elections, but wanted paper back-up, as it had not been proved conclusively that EVMs were tamper-proof. Gadkari insisted that reservations about EVMs were not confined to the BJP alone and many other political parties, including the Orissa unit of the Congress, were wary of its use."The system should be modernised," Gadkari said.
Former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao had done a lot of groundwork for constructing a Ram temple at Ayodhya but he could not carry his mission forward as the Congress lost power in the 1996 general elections, claims a new book by one of his close confidants.
Former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao was keen on building a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, but his attempt derailed after losing the elections, a senior aide has claimed.
Former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao had no knowledge of the plan to demolish Babri Masjid and he believed in the assurance given by top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders concerning the march to Ayodhya in 1992 by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and security at the disputed site, Rao's former media adviser PVRK Prasad said on Sunday.
According to state government sources, not only did the governor insert some corrections, but he also initialled the final draft after those corrections had been made, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Liberhan Commission''s Report on the Babri Mosque demolition and the Action Taken Report (ATR) will be discussed in Parliament on Monday.
The first no-confidence motion was moved against Jawaharlal Nehru in August 1963 by J B Kripalani.
Senior BJP leader and party prime ministerial candidate L K Advani on Tuesday alleged that the Manmohan Singh Government is the most inefficient one which compromised national security and pushed the price-graph due to its financial mismanagement.
Neerja Chowdhury says that dynastic politics is the bane of our democracy.
Ajit Singh represented a bridge between a constituency that represented a more traditional era in politics and a modern, forward-looking, India, remembers Aditi Phadnis.
The wax statue of Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar will be unveiled at Madame Tussauds Museum in April, the first Indian sportsperson to be featured in one of London's famous tourist attraction.
A copybook President, R Venkataraman, who passed into the ages on Tuesday, skilfully guided the country through a testing period of coalition politics in its nascent days that saw three prime ministers in two years.
The Balochs were totally suppressed by the Punabi-dominated Pakistani Army till 2004. But their desire for independence has remained as strong as ever. They started a second war of independence in December 2005, which continues till now despite the ruthless actions taken to suppress them by the previous government of Pervez Musharraf and the present government of Asif Ali Zardari.
In a strange case two judges -- father and son -- landed in jail in a dowry harassment case in Hyderabad. A court in the city remanded T Kiran Kumar, a magistrate, his father second additional district sessions judge of Mahbubnagar T Narasimha Rao and his wife Narayanamma to two weeks' judicial custody on the complaint of harassment for dowry.
From a hard core Leftist in the late 1960s to being the liberal face, Palaniappan Chidambaram combines in him the qualities of a bold reformer, experienced administrator and a taskmaster in whatever assignment is given to him.
Former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao is back in the news with the All India Muslim Personal Law Board accusing him of being equally responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. The board went on to say that Rao could never be forgiven for the demolition of the Babri Mosque.
Former PM Rao used to tell people that the maharaja of the erstwhile Gwalior state, Madhavarao Scindia was in "too much of a hurry to become prime minister", the authors say.
Former Union Communications Minister Sukhram was on Wednesday sentenced to three years imprisonment by a Delhi court for amassing disproportionate assets worth Rs 4.25 crore during his tenure in the P V Narasimha Rao government. The verdict was delivered in a packed courtroom in New Delhi in the presence of the octogenarian politician, from whose official house in Delhi Rs 2.45 crore in cash were recovered 13 years ago by a CBI team.
Former union urban development minister Sheila Kaul and her colleague P K Thungan are set to face criminal trial in a 1995 scam relating to allotment of over 40 shops and stalls in Delhi, as a Delhi court on Monday ordered framing of charges against them in the case.
Over a decade ago, PV Narasimha Rao had postulated a 'look east' policy for India. In view of the dynamism of the Asian economies in the early 1990s, it made sense to take advantage of the opportunities that these countries provided to expand Indian exports as also to diversify them away from excessive dependence on the US and Europe.
'It is like an island of excellence'.
The list of departures from the path of economic reforms can be longer.
Every time we look at the Congress, its future, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, we find the situation more hopeless than even a few months earlier, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Wiping the tears of the most oppressed in society and giving them succor remains central to the Gandhian vision and the mismatch between rhetoric and reality in the current Indian context is glaring.
"Azad saab (Ghulam Nabi Azad) had spoken on behalf of all of us that we don't accept this timeline -- we don't accept delimitation, election, statehood, we want delimitation, statehood and then election. If you want to hold polls, you'll have to restore statehood first," said Omar Abdullah.
The architect of India's economic reforms, Manmohan Singh, has another big mission on his hands now.
'The most nauseating part of the book pertains to the Gujarat riots. Advani rejects the settled truth that the post-Godhra violence was State-sponsored.'
People like Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram, who as finance minister had fully supported the NPS, refuse to exercise their moral and political influence to try and stop Ashok Gehlot and others hell-bent on wrecking the states' finances, notes Virendra Kapoor.
For the Bharatiya Janata Party anything manufactured in India, including by multinational companies, are local products and it would not make a distinction among them, the party said on Thursday. Responding to questions on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for national self-reliance, BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member, G V L Narasimha Rao, said there is not going to be any directive to buy local products but felt that a lot of people might themselves see the need to purchase those of good quality made in the country.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi greeted him on the occasion, NCP's Praful Patel blamed the Congress party's internal culture for Pawar missing the opportunity to occupy the top post in the 1990s.
There is a need for tax reforms in the country in a bolder way, Singh said.
