The return of a BJP-Sena regime after a love-hate war and gap of 15 years, demise of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde, collapse of Congress-Nationalisy Congress Party alliance and rising cases of farmers' suicides dominated Maharashtra's political landscape in 2014.
Public Money, Private Agenda -- The Use and Abuse of MPLADS by A Surya Prakash provides a comprehensive look at the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme, which was launched 20 years ago in 1993. Excerpts from the book.
This Teacher's Day, we chronicle the stories of such amazing teachers who inspire by example. Some of them you have perhaps heard of. Others are much more obscure.
Of the 27 projects being monitored, four to five are critical for Mumbai.
The world must hang its head in shame for being a mute spectator to the 'cultural holocaust' in Tibet, says Major General Mrinal Suman (retd).
'I hope the honourable PM and Mr Shah take steps to ensure that the NDA doesn't split.'
Vidarbha region has gained notoriety for a high number of farmers' suicides and the multi-crore irrigation scam. Sanjay Jog reports
In villages in Palghar district -- in Mumbai's backyard -- more than 254 children have died from malnutrition.
She is changing India one village at a time.
There is a total disconnect between the vast majority of Indians and their elected rulers and their minions in the executive and judiciary, says Sudip Mazumdar.
It is as much about farmer woes and the lack of job opportunities as about the mixing of religion and politics.
Rediff.com presents the gist of the speech delivered by Mr. Kailash Satyarthi on the Foundation Day of Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh.
The prime minister should have visited Sri Lanka, armed with a critique of the Rajapakse government based on nuance and fact, says Sreenivasan Jain
'We cannot let this country be a place where the poor pay to shit.' 'That is inhuman and unacceptable.'
Election manifestos may have lost their earlier importance. But a closer look at them does reveal a lot about a political party's own assessment of where it went wrong and what its future policy directions will look like, says A K Bhattacharya.
No large nation has done less to feed its millions of poor than India has in the past decade or two since the beneficial effects of the Green Revolution wore off.
'The previous (Congress) government at least did not veto provisions of the cattle laws.' 'The BJP is actively weakening the provisions.' 'The BJP government tried to export goats from Nagpur for slaughter to the Middle East.' 'The whole country was aghast and offended. We are a country of Ahimsa.' 'The BJP has incentivised the butcher industry so meat export has gone up, live animal export has gone up, leather export is on the rise, smuggling has gone up.'
'Forensics experts say in all such unexplained deaths of scientists and engineers involved in the nuclear programme, fingerprints are absent, as also other clues that would assist the police in identifying the culprit(s).' Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com reports on a petition that demands a Special Investigation Team probe the mysterious deaths of India's nuclear scientists.
'You may show at the end of December how much money has come into the system, but none would be the wiser because most of see only what we want to see and believe.' 'Some of us will see through it and you will make your proxies call us enemies of the State.' 'I was somewhat with you till here. But we diverge from here on until you can do something which will veer through my cynicism brought about by your policy,' says Harsh N Gokhale.
'The consolation is that in recent years, the focus at the time of the anniversary has been increasingly shifting from Indira Gandhi's assassination to the plight of the thousands of innocent Sikhs who had been killed in retaliation,' Manoj Mitta, co-author of When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
The charm of Kolkata is still alive says Sumit Ganguli.
'It is not about women today; it's about men.' 'We need to focus our energy on a war footing on men.' 'Let us start with a boy who is 10 years old.' 'If you don't concentrate on your son, the safe spaces for women will shrink further.'
The clichd path of conducting 'uninterrupted and uninterruptable' bilateral dialogue with Pakistan to improve ties remains unimplemented and un-implementable under prevailing circumstances that are unlikely to alter in the near future, says Rahul Bedi.
With nearly a million identified slums, UP urgently requires housing for the poor
6GB RAM, 16MP camera, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor... Himanshu Juneja reviews the OnePlus 3
The families of the Muslim youth from Hashimpura who were shot dead 28 years ago had some committed supporters in their long struggle for justice.
The ordinary life lived in Pakistan is rarely a part of Indian imagination. This is this gap that Pakistani television serials have succeeded in bridging, says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
Courage beyond Compare, as the name suggests, profiles Indian paralympic sports stars who despite physical disability, have fought the odds to become world class, champion athletes.
'To be complimented for a fantastic performance after just viewing the trailer! This never happened to me before.' 'If you have given a party a mandate for five years, stop blaming it for everything under the sun.' 'My kind of films do not make stars. Now we, the actors, after years of struggle, have created a parallel industry where we have made a name for ourselves. But stars we are not nor can we be.' 'For a boy coming from a remote village of Bihar at the Indo-Nepal border where no transport was available to commute to the nearest town, even coming to Delhi and then Mumbai and finally watching himself on the silver screen was a huge thing!'
'I had been to a village in Haryana. One woman who had four daughters-in-law and three daughters, told me that she had to be awake the whole night to take each of them, one by one to the fields.' 'I am not saying all rapes are because of lack of toilets. 20 to 30 percent of rape cases happen because of the lack of toilets.' Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, founder, Sulabh International, on how India should go about building toilets for all its people in this exclusive interview with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
