During the Congress regime, India did witnessa slew of reforms which are now taken up by the Modi government too.
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.
Foreign exchange reserves as a percentage of India's total external debt were 73 per cent at the end of December 2015.
He challenged the Congress to select someone 'capable' as its president, who did not belong to 'that one family'.
'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.'
'This coming general election is not going to be about manifestoes.'
'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 cooperation of Yakub with the investigating agencies after he was picked up informally in Kathmandu and his role in persuading some other members of the family to come out of Pakistan and surrender constitute, in my view, a strong mitigating circumstance to be taken into consideration while considering whether the death penalty should be implemented,' B Raman had written in August 2007.
Repromulgation is a perennial malaise; and judges must clarify -- indeed, revisit -- the rules that govern this practice, argues Shubhankar Dam.
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.'
As India strives to make its Act East Policy a comprehensive politico-diplomatic and economic success, Brunei gains more salience, says Dr Rahul Mishra.
There was no breakthrough in US Secretary of State John F Kerry's India visit, but no breakdown either, says C Uday Bhaskar.
Two US lawmakers write to the House Speaker asking to extend an invitation
'If Rao had, in fact, given a word to President Clinton in 1994 that India would not test, he would not have encouraged Vajpayee to test. The note, said to have been handed over to Vajpayee by Rao with the words, 'Now is the time to accomplish my unfinished task' may not have been a reference to nuclear tests at all,' says T P Sreenivasan.
Fali Nariman, one of India's best-known lawyers, tells Aditi Phadnis that plurality of political opinion is the only way to counter intolerance
'Is this the only way for India to become a $5 trillion economy?' 'When you have unused foreign exchange here, why borrow more dollars?'
The next prime minister must ensure that the mistakes made by Manmohan Singh during his tenure are not repeated, notes A K Bhattacharya.
'It is best that an amicable solution to the dispute is found outside the precincts of the courts of law,' says former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
'The timing is a little suspect.' 'Could it be, just be, a convenient tool to wield months ahead of a hyper-crucial state election, judge if its efficacy in sending out its subliminal message is intact, and accordingly decide the future course of action on the long but quick road to 2019?'
'The situation in the country is very scary.' 'There is an increasing attack on the Constitutional democratic rights of our people.'
'Modi's brilliance seems to be in combining Indira Gandhi's 'feel' for the Indian pulse and Narasimha Rao's cynicism.' 'By the time the Opposition leaders caught up with Modi over the 'surgical strikes', he had already moved on,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
'The D K Adikesavulu clan is so wealthy, owns so many houses, and has so much jewellery,' notes T V R Shenoy, 'that it did not notice a servant stealing at the rate of Rs 66 lakh every year!'
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'When Sachin Tendulkar bats, no one in India cares if he is from Mumbai or if he is a Hindu or a Brahmin or whatever.' 'We just want him to win it for India.' 'The same is with Modi and the people who voted across caste and regional lines for him.' We want him to win it for India,' says Madhu A K.
'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.'
The Modi-Shah definition of secularism is, India is a confident, resurgent Hindu, and therefore secular, country.
Modi has the ideas for a new, hopeful India, and an idiom in which to sell optimism to voters. But he doesn't yet have the team for it, and soon enough, questions will begin to be asked by an impatient, non-ideological, I-don't-owe-anybody-anything generation of Indian voters, says Shekar Gupta.
'Sonia Gandhi can't rejuvenate the party, her heir is fodder for stand-up comedians, and nobody in the Congress has the guts to question the Nehru-Gandhis.'
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.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh interacts with readers on Rediff Chat as he discusses the period that changed India's history, forever.
From being the hand-picked choice of Sonia Gandhi as Andhra Pradesh chief minister to sitting on a dharna in Delhi against division of the state, Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy has turned from a Congress regional leader to a disgruntled rebel in his nearly 39-month tumultuous tenure.
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.
'The extended Bose family is insisting that the Japanese government must release all the information they have on Bose's ashes. It cannot be forgotten that Bose was in Japanese care when his 'death' occurred. Ultimately, it is the Japanese who hold the secret about what happened to him.'
'Going by his political conduct over the past 15 years since first becoming chief minister, he has made enough enemies among equals as friends and followers.' 'They could gang up and that could mean a lot for AIADMK politics to handle,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'According national security and higher defence management empathetic political attention they warrant is critical. Will Prime Minister Modi pick up this gauntlet?' asks C Uday Bhaskar.
The success of the government will depend substantially on the quality of its team of key ministers, officials and advisors
'The country has moved beyond the likes of Yogi Adityanath and his medieval thinking. The results of the by-elections are early warning signals by impatient Indians. It's up to the BJP to learn its lesson or face the consequences,' says Ashutosh.
'His essential doctrine was only the local police can fight terror.' '"You can't fire at mobs throwing stones," he said, adding one has to think innovatively, even defensively, sometimes.' Shekhar Gupta remembers the uncoventional SuperCop.
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