"Even when Vajpayee is ill in hospital, I was the first one to visit him, since the Congress believes he has contributed to the country," he said.
'No one institution can cleanse it: Not the courts, government or activists.' 'And least of all the Indian Police Service,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
If Nitish Kumar did not make his choice now, he could not re-enter the NDA later on and hope to be counted in as a prime ministerial possibility whenever the chance arises, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'This prime minister thinks he knows everything.' 'He has to consult, he has to talk and he has to mobilise the best people, but having seen him function, I have no expectations from him.'
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.
'It seems to me that bringing Rahul in now would be like throwing petrol on the flames consuming Congress,' says Aakar Patel.
'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.
'It will be foolhardy to overlook that this stunning shift in China's stance comes as the culmination of the severely damaged India-China relationship under the present government,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'So you wonder, couldn't he have combined these two qualities: His love of his own voice, and his acting talents, to voice concern about the Kathua and Unnao rapes?' asks Jyoti Punwani. 'His supporters are siding with the accused in the first case, and are the accused in the second.'
'How do we explain that on the economic, internal security and strategic fronts, India's unstable coalitions have acted more decisively and boldly than all our full-majority governments yet?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will soon get around to reworking their organisational set-up and administrative priorities to regain lost ground in the wake of the Delhi electoral debacle, but there's third course available to them as well. That is to introduce the presidential form of government, which prime ministers Indira Gandhi and A B Vajpayee flirted with before abandoning it. Will Modi go further than them? N Sathiya Moorthy analyses the scenario.
'Modi's visit is path breaking in the sense that India has come out of the closet and is prepared to deal with Israel openly and in a host of fields, military as well as civilian,' says P R Kumaraswamy, one of India's leading experts on the Middle-East, currently in Israel.
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.
He is starting to realise that an era is ending. And he is not ready to have a five-decade career besmirched by two alphabets -- AP -- that have cropped up in the AgustaWestland papers, says Aditi Phadnis.
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.
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 family is the final court of appeal, the first among unequals. If there is no family, all leaders are equal. If all leaders are equal, anyone can lead the Congress. So every time the family has stayed in the background, the Congress has split.'
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.
In UP, the BJP focused carefully on the sub-caste divisions within the Dalits and also gave a large number of tickets to SC candidates from sub-castes.
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.
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.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's hot saffronite swami is yoga teacher Ramdev.
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.
The critics of Prime Minister Modi's latest project are not looking at the future but living in the past, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Culinary legend Satish Arora hangs up his apron after almost 5 decades of service at the Taj group of hotels.
The Indian economy was on an impressive growth path through the first decade of this century till it was brought to an abrupt halt by the policy inertia during UPA2 and the Modi government's inability to restore economic and financial momentum. Fascinating glimpses of what went wrong from Puja Mehra's must-read book The Lost Decade: How India's Growth Story Devolved Into Growth Without A Story.
'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.'
The Congress kept sheltering Quattrochi, and the BJP was more intent on shielding the Hinduja brothers. The fact is that the two roads crisscrossed, and neither the truth prevailed nor did the law take its course, says Mohan Guruswamy.
'An opportunity is at hand to think big and recast the India-China relationship on a new template, which would help the pursuit of our country's dream of major power status,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Naresh Chandra was most certainly among the greatest patriots two generations of Indian strategists have seen.
No prime minister of India ever had greater experience of running a state than Narendra Modi.
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
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 prospects for strong, sustained economic reforms do not appear to be promising in India.
With President Pranab Mukherjee voicing his objection to the 'ordinance route', senior ministers met here on Tuesday to discuss how to ensure that the ordinances issued recently are followed up with legislative action in the upcoming budget session in February.
'There is a design of fundamentalists that the north east must become an Islamic country.'
Four specific areas will be watched carefully in the first half of FY16
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.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
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.
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