'Modi didn't face such belligerence in his home state. Moreover, as the prime minister, he can no longer resort to his earlier ploy of describing every attack on himself as an attack on Gujarat. Instead, he has to rebut the charges with calm logic,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'If we can award Madan Mohan Malaviya who died in 1946, then why not the Mahatma who died in 1948?' 'Why not go a little further back in time and give the award to Rabindranath Tagore who died in 1941?' 'And should we mark Lokmanya Tilak's 100th death anniversary in 2020 by giving him a Bharat Ratna,' asks Amberish K Diwanji.
The note ban is Modi's make-or-break gambit for 2019. Opposition leaders see a vulnerability and won't gift pre-eminence to the Congress, says Shekhar Gupta.
Yeddyurappa would take the oath alone as the chief minister and once the majority is proved on the floor of the assembly, cabinet members would be inducted.
'Voters did not turn up in large numbers in Bangalore.' 'If more voters of Bangalore had come to vote, we would definitely have reached the magic figure.'
Israel is determined to take the bilateral engagement to a different level that goes beyond defence hardware and intelligence software. Kanchan Gupta reports exclusively from Tel Aviv for Rediff.com
Contradictions have emerged over the death of eight SIMI men, who were gunned down in an alleged encounter with the police on the outskirts of the Bhopal hours after they escaped from the high-security Bhopal Central Jail killing a security guard.
'We aren't so unreasonable as to demand that he should have fully reversed Indira Gandhi's worst economic legacy, bank nationalisation.' 'But he could have made a beginning by selling off the two most stressed small public sector banks, and then announced that each year for the next 10, one government bank with the most messed-up balance sheet will be sold.' 'It would have electrified the markets, shocked his other banks into better behaviour, and marked his name among the great reformers,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
The frenzy to be present at the Madison Square Garden on September 28 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Indian-American community likely rivals a rock concert held at the famous New York venue.
How seriously should we take Natwar Singh's book? Indeed how seriously should all such memoirs and autobiographies be taken? The answer, I imagine, depends on the intent. If the authors are merely settling scores, as many think Natwar Singh is, future historians would be entitled to ignore such autobiographies. But if there is no mens rea (guilty mind), so to speak, these books must be taken seriously, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has five key aspects to his style of leading -- total command over bureaucracy, direct approval on every decision, flexible approach to issues, importance of communication and adept at repackaging schemes, says A K Bhattacharya.
The finance ministry website that lists the total disinvestment revenues to be mobilised during the current year already shows that no receipts are expected from strategic sales in the current year.
Businessmen love low import duties on their inputs and high duties on their outputs. And the Bharatiya Janata Party has a keen ear for business sentiment.
Culinary legend Satish Arora hangs up his apron after almost 5 decades of service at the Taj group of hotels.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's first State visit to India is an indication of the success of India's Act East Policy, says Dr Rahul Mishra.
'The leak is likely to continue for some time before it becomes stable, but this is something that NPCIL, who is the plant operator, will have to do. For this, we have to plan very carefully.'
A weak presence in the Rajya Sabha has forced the NDA to try and rope in 'weak links' in the Opposition ranks to pass key legislation in the Upper House.
'The situation in the country is very scary.' 'There is an increasing attack on the Constitutional democratic rights of our people.'
'It is imperative that all parties make a commitment that they shall abide by the final decision of the Supreme Court.' 'This will be the best way to bring a closure.' 'It is time India moves on to face several other challenges.'
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The remarkable feature of those reforms unveiled in 1991 is that none of those decisions has been disowned by subsequent governments in the last 25 years.
The 1992 Babri Mosque demolition was an "act of planned sabotage" and not a by frenzied mob of Hindu outfits, a news portal claimed on Friday on the basis of a sting operation it had carried over a period of two years.
'If you solve it in one day, it will go after a day.' 'If it is there for 100 years or 1,000 years, reservation has to continue.'
The prospects for strong, sustained economic reforms do not appear to be promising in India.
'As someone who has had the opportunity of cross examining Vinod Rai, extensively over three days as part of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, many of us included I had concluded at that point of time that this report rests on the foundation of sand.'
Like Nehru, Modi is loathe to touch the public sector. His policy towards Israel leans towards 'non-alignment'. You can find other similarities: frequent public speeches, personalised leadership, total control over foreign and strategic policies, even stylised dressing, says Shekhar Gupta.
Report card of the Narendra Modi-led central government for the first six months, on the basis of ratings by top CEOs, under key parameters.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's hot saffronite swami is yoga teacher Ramdev.
'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.
Controlled communal tension is useful in ensuring continued Muslim support. Fear of the BJP is a requirement for both, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, to keep their Muslim vote bank in line, says Saeed Naqvi.
No prime minister of India ever had greater experience of running a state than Narendra Modi.
Foreign exchange reserves as a percentage of India's total external debt were 73 per cent at the end of December 2015.
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
If an elected government had been sworn in, Jung's tenure and the government would have been more or less co-terminus and Jung would have been just the ceremonial head of Delhi. Now, he will run Delhi, pending another round of assembly elections, says Aditi Phadnis
20 years ago this day, May 11, 1998, India conducted its second nuclear test at Pokharan in Rajasthan. In a fascinating interview on Rediff.com, K Subrahmanyam revealed how Indian PMs reacted to nuclear ambitions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being accused of wrong things. His main problem is his view of himself, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan
What Shekhar Gupta would have really liked to know from Pranabda: Why did Sonia prefer Dr Singh to him as PM? Why did he deny finance first, why did he accept it 5 years later, and why did he make such a mess of it? How did he force Sonia to nominate him for President and not Hamid Ansari? And how does he justify that most toxic legacy -- the Vodafone tax amendment?
Manmohan Singh, reveals the former President, was keen that either P Chidambaram or Montek Singh Ahluwalia be the finance minister.
